France's foreign minister called on Friday for an independent investigation into Hamas' announced deaths of more than 110 people at a food distribution in Gaza following an Israeli fire.
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“I want to say very clearly today that we will ask for explanations and that an independent investigation will be necessary to determine what happened,” Stéphane Séjourné said on France Inter radio.
The minister emphasized that there should be no “double standards” in France’s reactions.
“France says things. She says things when it comes to calling Hamas terrorists. But she also has to say things when atrocities happen in Gaza,” he commented.
Stéphane Séjourné also stressed that if an investigation were to result in these facts being classified as war crimes, “of course justice must decide.”
He also expressed outrage at the idea that people were starving in Gaza. It was “unbearable for us”.
The war was sparked on October 7 by an attack by Hamas commandos infiltrating from the neighboring Gaza Strip in southern Israel that killed at least 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
In response, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas and launched a military offensive that claimed more than 30,000 lives, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.
This war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe for the Palestinian people.