Targeting the elderly in Gaza
In Gaza, older people were targeted by bombings, executions by hanging, malnourishment, dehydration, and denial of medical care and supplies. An estimated 7% of the elderly were martyred as a result of the ruthless onslaught on the Strip; this number does not include the thousands of people whose names were not registered in hospital records. Due to their advanced age, incapacity to move, and fragile state, the elderly in the Gaza Strip suffered the most. They also had a harder time healing from wounds.
Startling accounts of field executions and physical liquidations against several senior citizens over 60 have reached the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory. These incidents include soldiers firing shots at the elderly after requesting that they leave their houses. In other instances, they were arbitrarily detained and arrested for hours or days before being executed shortly after their release. As stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention, the elderly are protected by international humanitarian law as they are citizens by default; nonetheless, there are additional regulations that apply in certain situations.