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A senior Hamas official on Friday accused Israeli forces of carrying out a "heinous crime against innocent civilians" after images of half-naked Palestinian men detained in Gaza circulated on social media.

Izzat El-Reshiq, who is in exile abroad, has urged international human rights organisations to intervene to show what happened to these men and help secure their release.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was concerned by the images and recalled that all detainees must be treated with humanity and dignity in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, whose country supports Hamas, has also criticized Israel, accusing it in X of "barbarism in the treatment of captives and innocent citizens."

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Israeli television on Thursday showed footage, which Reuters has verified, of what it said were captured Hamas fighters. They were in their underwear and with their heads bowed, sitting on a street in Gaza City.

"We are talking about individuals who are detained in Jabalia and Shejaiya (in Gaza City), Hamas strongholds and centers of gravity," Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said at a briefing when asked about the footage. "We're talking about military-age men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks ago."

The Israeli military has called on civilians to leave areas where it plans to operate in its military campaign to eliminate Hamas in Gaza following the Oct. 7 massacre by the Islamist militant group in Israel.

One photograph showed more than 20 men kneeling on the sidewalk or in the street, with Israeli soldiers looking on and dozens of shoes and sandals abandoned in the street. A similar number of detainees, also half-naked, were crammed into the back of a nearby truck.

Some Palestinians said they recognized family members in the footage and denied they had ties to Hamas or any other group. Some, they said, were children or young people. Reshiq said the detainees had been captured at a school in Gaza that was being used as a shelter after weeks of Israeli bombardment that has displaced many Gazans.

Hamas holds Israeli forces responsible for the lives and safety of the detained men, Reshiq said. "And we urge human rights organizations to intervene immediately to expose this heinous crime against innocent civilians who took refuge in a school, which had become a safe haven due to Zionist aggression and massacres, and to exert pressure by all means to secure their release," he said.

London-based Arabic-language news outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed said one of those arrested was its correspondent Diaa Kahlout. He has urged the international community and human rights groups to denounce the arrest of journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called for his release.

Some Palestinians identified the spot where the men were captured as the northeastern town of Beit Lahia, an area Israel had warned civilians to leave and which has been surrounded and besieged by Israeli tanks for weeks. Reuters confirmed that the location was indeed Beit Lahia.

Hani Almadhoun, a Palestinian-American living in Virginia, said he saw relatives in one picture, including his 12-year-old nephew, who had no ties to Hamas or other factions.

"We strongly emphasize the importance of treating all detainees with humanity and dignity, in accordance with international humanitarian law," Jessica Moussan, the ICRC's media relations adviser for the Middle East, said in a statement.

Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission in London, told X that the images evoked "some of the darkest passages in human history." Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi has noted, also in X, that the incident was "a blatant attempt at humiliation and degradation of Palestinian men... stripped and displayed as trophies of war."

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