ISRAEL’S military actions in Gaza are increasingly endangering the very existence of Palestinians as a people, the United Nations human rights agency warned today.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel ended a ceasefire last month that had lasted eight weeks, according to UN figures.

At least 26 Palestinian lives have been lost and more than 100 people were wounded in the last 24 hours, the coastal territory’s Health Ministry reported today, as the Israeli military issued an urgent evacuation warning to residents of several northern Gaza districts.

“In light of the cumulative impact of Israeli forces’ conduct in Gaza, we are seriously concerned that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group,” Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.

This followed the emergence of further evidence that Israel has been brutally mistreating Palestinian prisoners.

Brazil’s embassy in the occupied West Bank said this week that it had requested the immediate release of the body of a 17-year-old Palestinian who died in Israeli custody.

A representative of the Brazilian diplomatic mission in Ramallah said it was helping the family speed up the process of bringing home the body of Walid Ahmad, who had a Brazilian passport.

According to an Israeli doctor who observed the autopsy at the request of the boy’s family, starvation was probably the primary cause of his death.

Walid, who had been held for six months without charge, was extremely malnourished and also showed signs of inflammation of the colon and scabies, said a report by Dr Daniel Solomon.

Israel’s prison service claims to give all prisoners basic rights.

However, 10 Palestinian prisoners from Gaza who were freed and returned to the territory on Thursday said that they had suffered constant abuse while in Israeli custody.

After being brought by bus to a hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, they said they had been held for at least part of the time in Sde Teiman, a military prison camp notorious for abuses of Gaza detainees.

One of the freed men, Fayez Ayoub, said that “156 days have passed with us in agony. We are tortured and in pain.”

He said detainees were abused every day and had little sleep.

Another man, Hani Abu Sharif, said they were frequently beaten, stripped to their underwear and forced to stand barefoot on stones, causing their feet to bleed. They were only allowed to shower every month or two, he added.