In New York on Wednesday, Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the UN, said that the number of civilians killed in the Gaza Strip shows that Israel’s military actions against Hamas fighters are “clearly wrong.”
Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. In an attack on October 7, they killed 1,400 people and took more than 240 prisoners. Israel has promised to wipe out Hamas. Israel has bombed Gaza, a small area with 2.3 million people, from the air, put a block on it, and invaded it from the ground.
“Hamas breaks the law when they use people as shields.” He told Reuters NEXT, “When you look at how many civilians were killed in the military operations, it’s clear that something is wrong.”
The Palestinian government said that 10,569 people have been killed, and 40% of them were children.
“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,” said Guterres. “That doesn’t help Israel in relation to the global public opinion.”
Guterres compared the number of children killed in Gaza to the number of children killed in wars around the world that he tells the UN Security Council about every year.
“Every year, the highest number of killings of children by any of the actors in all the conflicts that we witness is the maximum in the hundreds,” said Guterres.
“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,” he stated.
There is a list in the UN report on children and armed conflict that is meant to make people involved in wars feel bad so that they will take steps to protect children. It has been controversial for a long time, and officials say Israel has been putting pressure on the US to stay off the list in recent years.
The UN confirmed in June that Russia’s armed forces killed 136 children in Ukraine in 2022, so Guterres added them to the list of culprits in the report. The next report is due in the middle of 2024.
He also said that 92 people who worked for UNRWA (the UN organisation for Palestinian refugees) were killed in Gaza.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza was called “catastrophic” by Guterres. He also said, “It is absolutely essential – absolutely essential – to have a flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza that matches the dramatic needs that the population is facing.”
There has been more humanitarian help going to Gaza thanks to work by the UN. Guterres said that only 630 cars had been able to cross the Rafah border crossing from Egypt in the last 18 days. On top of that, the UN wants to be able to use the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom border crossing.
“We are in intense negotiations with Israel, with US, with Egypt, in order to make sure that we have an effective humanitarian aid to Gaza,” said Guterres. “Until now it has been too little, too late.”
