A/HRC/10/20 page 7 officers were also killed, 235 in air strikes carried out on the first day. A total of 5,303 Palestinians were injured, including 1,606 children and 828 women (namely, 1 in every 225 Gazans was killed or injured, not counting mental injury, which must be assumed to be extensive);2 (b) Homes and public infrastructure throughout Gaza, especially in Gaza City, sustained extensive damage, including several United Nations facilities; an estimated 21,000 homes were either totally destroyed or badly damaged; (c) A total of 51,000 people were internally displaced in makeshift shelters that provided minimal protection, while others fled to homes of friends and relatives that seemed slightly safer.3 9. There is no way to reconcile the general purposes and specific prescriptions of international humanitarian law with the scale and nature of the Israeli military attacks commenced on 27 December 2008. The attacks with F-16 fighter bombers, Apache helicopters, long-range artillery from the ground and sea were directed at an essentially defenceless society of 1.5 million persons. As recent reports submitted to the Council by the Special Rapporteur emphasized, the residents of Gaza were particularly vulnerable to physical and mental damage from such attacks as the society as a whole had been brought to the brink of collapse by 18 months of blockade that restricted the flow of food, fuel and medical supplies to sub-subsistence levels, and was responsible, according to health specialists, for a serious overall decline in the health of the population and of the health system. Any assessment under international law of the attacks of 27 December should take into account the weakened condition of the Gazan civilian population resulting from the sustained unlawfulness of the pre-existing Israeli blockade that violated articles 33 (prohibition on collective punishment) and 55 (duty to provide food and health care to the occupied population) of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Considering the obligation of the occupying Power to care for the well-being of the civilian occupied population, mounting a comprehensive attack on a society already weakened by unlawful occupation practices would appear to aggravate the breach of responsibility described above owing to the difficulties of maintaining the principle of distinction. 10. The deputy head of the embassy of Israel at the European Union, Ambassador Zvi Tal, during discussions with a committee of the European Parliament, sought to defend the attacks on Gaza by describing them as addressing “a very peculiar” situation. In responding to allegations 2 A recent report by Near East Consulting quoted by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in its Gaza Humanitarian Situation Report of 26 January 2009 concluded that 96 per cent of Gaza residents suffer from depression, with intense depression being experienced by 81 per cent of the residents of North Gaza and Rafah districts. Such mental deterioration is itself an indication of a failure by the occupying Power to discharge its basic duty to safeguard the health of civilians living under occupation. 3 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Field Update from the Humanitarian Coordinator, 9 February 2009, and the Gaza Flash Appeal, 2 February 2009; Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, press release, ref. 36/2009, 12 March 2009.