Hamas says around 60 captives held in Gaza have also been killed in the Israeli bombardment.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the mounting Palestinian death toll in Gaza, which includes thousands of children, shows that “there is something clearly wrong” with Israel’s military operations in the densely-populated Strip.
Speaking at the Reuters NEXT conference on Wednesday, Guterres lashed out at Israel for killing civilians in Gaza under its most brutal bombardment of the Palestinian enclave in years.
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) have killed 10,569 Palestinians, including 4,324 children, and displaced at least one million more within one month.
“There are violations by Hamas when they have human shields. But when one looks at the number of civilians that were killed with the military operations, there is something that is clearly wrong,” Guterres said, as quoted by Reuters.
He added: “We have in a few days in Gaza thousands and thousands of children killed, which means there is also something clearly wrong in the way military operations are being done.”
Israel, backed by its Western allies, has used the Palestinian resistance operation of October 7, ‘Al Aqsa Flood’, as a pretext for its brutal war on the densely populated Gaza Strip.
Carried out by the Al-Qassam Brigades—Hamas’ armed wing—the operation marked the biggest Palestinian attack on Israel and resulted in the killing of some 1,400 Israelis.
Hamas managed to break out of the besieged Gaza Strip and infiltrated occupied territories through air, land and sea for the first time in years and returned with 240 Israeli and foreign captives.
The Palestinian group said the operation was a response to Israel’s intensified raids on holy sites in Jerusalem in recent months, as well as its decades-long crippling occupation of Palestinian land.
Hamas says around 60 captives held in Gaza have also been killed in the Israeli bombardment.
“It is also important to make Israel understand that it is against the interests of Israel to see every day the terrible image of the dramatic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people,” Guterres said.
While Guterres condemned the Hamas attack, he stressed the need to distinguish the difference between the group and the Palestinian people.
“If we don’t make that distinction, I think it’s humanity itself that will lose its meaning,” Guterres said.
Since the start of the war, at least four ceasefire resolutions have been blocked by Israel’s Western allies who have instead called for “a humanitarian pause”. Israel has dismissed such calls and vowed to continue bombarding Gaza with “all its power”.
Palestine holds little weight at the UN, which has yet to grant it a full membership at the global organisation. In 20212, the bloc granted Palestine the status of a “non-member observer state” under a resolution adopted by the General Assembly.
Granting Palestine a full membership would require the greenlight from the Security Council where the United States, Israel’s closest ally, holds veto power.
The full UN membership, if granted, would mean Palestine’s statehood is recognised internationally. Meanwhile, Israel, which has continued to occupy Palestine for decades, enjoys full membership at the UN.
The Zionist state received its membership in 1949, a year after the launch of the Nakba, or catastrophe, in which Israel forcibly displaced and killed Palestinians to establish a Jewish state.
