The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Thursday said Israel carried out genocidal acts in Gaza through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.

The commission stated that Israel had intentionally attacked and destroyed the Palestinian territory’s main fertility centre, and had simultaneously imposed a siege and blocked aid including medication for ensuring safe pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care.

Meanwhile, the Israeli mission in Geneva in a statement categorically rejected what it called unfounded allegations.

According to the commission, Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare.

It said this amounted to two categories of genocidal acts during Israel’s offensive in Gaza, launched after the attacks by Hamas militants on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Out of its five categories, the inquiry said the two implicating Israel were deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

“These violations have not only caused severe immediate physical and mental harm and suffering to women and girls, but irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group,” the commission’s chair Navi Pillay said in a statement.

Israeli attacks on Gaza reproductive centres ‘genocidal’ — UN