Turk used the same adjective to define the destruction of the local hospital after the Israeli military offensive and called for an "independent, effective and transparent" investigation into the deaths.

"Given the climate of impunity, the investigation should include international investigators," he said.

"Hospitals enjoy very special protection under international humanitarian law," he said, stressing that the killing of civilians, detainees and others outside the fighting "is a war crime."

So far, the Israeli army has not commented on the findings, which have been denounced by the authorities in Gaza, controlled by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).

On Monday, the Hamas-run Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip said it had exhumed about 200 bodies in the past three days of people allegedly buried by Israeli forces in mass graves near the hospital.

"Our teams are still finding bodies inside the Nasser Medical Complex and since Saturday the bodies of about 200 martyrs have been exhumed," said Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the Civil Defense.

Mohammed al-Mughayer, head of the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip, confirmed that 283 bodies had been found in the graves at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Hospitals in the Gaza Strip, which Israel says are used as centers of military operations by Hamas, have been heavily targeted during the Israeli military operation in the Palestinian territory since the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli territory by Hamas militants from Gaza.

Turk also denounced the deaths of civilians in the latest Israeli shelling in the southern city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, and spoke out against a large-scale Israeli offensive on the city, where more than 1.2 million Palestinians have been displaced from other parts of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military operations.

"International leaders are united in calling for the protection of the civilian population trapped in Rafah," said Turk, who insisted that a military operation against the city would result in further violations of international humanitarian law, as well as more deaths, injuries and large-scale displacement.

"The recent images of a premature baby being cut from the womb of its dying mother and of two adjacent homes in which 15 children and women were killed go beyond the pale of war," he said.

Turk also denounced the "unabated" human rights violations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, stressing that despite international condemnation of the "massive" settler attacks on Oct. 12-14, "facilitated by Israeli security forces," these attacks have continued with the support of Israeli agents.

In response to the Oct. 7 attack, Israel launched a large-scale military operation against the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of wiping out Hamas.

The Palestinian movement's attack on Israel has caused 1,170 deaths, most of them civilians, according to a count based on official Israeli data.

About 250 people have also been taken hostage to Gaza and 129 are still there, of whom 34 have been declared dead by the Israeli army.

The Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip over the past six months have caused more than 34,000 deaths, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.

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