Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur, condemned Monday "Israel" for silencing Western media reports on its ongoing crimes in the Gaza Strip.
“What does Israel not want international journalists to see? How much uglier than so-far-told it is the genocide it has committed in Gaza,” Albanese said in a post on X.
“Humanity, wake up!” gushed Albanese in another X post, contending that the Western media's silence on the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the oppression of Palestinians under the Israeli government does not mean that these atrocities have ceased.
In her message, Albanese shared a statement from the Foreign Press Association condemning the ban on international journalists' access to Gaza and questioning what "Israel" is trying to hide in Palestinian territory.
Alongside preventing Western media from covering Israeli crimes in Gaza, the only journalists reporting from inside the Strip are Palestinians, who are being targeted and killed.
It is worth noting that Palestinian journalists and their families have been consistently targeted by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza since the genocide began in October. According to Gaza's Media Office, the latest death toll shows that the IOF has killed 158 journalists since October 7.
On July 6, five journalists were among those killed in the occupation's attacks in Gaza City and the al-Nusairat camp within 12 hours.
It is worth noting that journalists are considered protected civilians and are prohibited from being directly targeted in attacks under international humanitarian law.
A study by the British scientific journal The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal, predicted, on Monday, that the number of Palestinians killed during the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, both directly and indirectly, will exceed 186,000.
The journal based this estimate on the consideration that wars have indirect health effects that extend beyond the direct harm caused by violence.
The journal then explained that "even if the conflict were to end immediately, many indirect deaths will continue to be recorded in the coming months and years due to causes such as reproductive diseases, infectious diseases, and non-communicable diseases."
Additionally, it noted that "the total number of deaths is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict, the devastated healthcare infrastructure, the severe shortage of food, water, and shelter, the inability of the population to move to safe places, and the loss of funding for UNRWA."
The British journal emphasized that "in recent conflicts, the number of indirect deaths has ranged from 3 to 15 times the number of direct deaths," stressing, "If we apply a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths for every direct death, we will find that this figure is much higher than the number of direct deaths."
Given the more than 37,000 reported deaths in Gaza, it is not surprising to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be recorded in Gaza, the British journal emphasized.
It added that using the estimated population of the Gaza Strip for 2022, which is 2,375,259 people, would translate to 7.9% of the total population in the sector.