RIGHTS groups accused Israel today of carrying out a massive, organised operation to crush, mix and transport millions of tons of rubble out of the Gaza Strip.

In a new report called Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the removal of the rubble could be an attempt at demographic engineering and erasing evidence of the genocide the Israelis are accused of carrying out against Palestinians in Gaza.

The Israelis have killed at least 73,387 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since invading Gaza following the October 7 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, which killed 1,139.

The report estimates that there are approximately 68 million tonnes of rubble across the Gaza Strip, much of the result of Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on the enclave.

At least 10m tonnes of rubble have already been removed, crushed or moved from its original site within areas under Israel’s unlawful military control, which encompass about two-thirds of the enclave.

About 400 heavy pieces of excavation, crushing and transport machinery are also working to demolish the remaining structures in Gaza.

Debris is being loaded onto nearly 100 Israeli trucks daily, which are leaving the Gaza Strip for undisclosed sites.

Amnesty International’s Budour Hassan said this could be a calculated attempt to destroy evidence of crimes committed by Israel during the war.

He said: “The bulldozing is an integral part of all attempts to destroy the lands in Gaza City and in the Gaza Strip in general.

“The real fears are that these operations are taking place with the aim of obliterating and hiding evidence.”

Mohammed Salha, director of the NGO Network in the Gaza Strip, said: “There are thousands of martyrs under this rubble,” and moving it “means a deliberate destruction of the crime scene.”

The removal of the debris from the destruction of Gaza also means the bodies of thousands of missing people, estimated by Gaza’s civil defence to be around 8,500, will be lost.

Abu Asim, a Palestinian citizen whose family members remain buried in the eastern areas of the Gaza Strip, told the Al Jazeera news network that “the first tragedy was their martyrdom, and the second and daily tragedy is the absence of the evidence with which we will try this occupation for these crimes and atrocities.”