Iran accused Israel on Wednesday of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as Israel stepped up attacks on that Palestinian territory in response to a bloody Hamas attack on its soil on October 7.
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“The Zionist regime’s attacks have reached such intensity that it appears that the aim is the massacre of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights , Volker Türke.
“The statements of the Israeli regime authorities and the widespread and systematic attacks by Zionist forces in the Gaza Strip show that this is a campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people,” he charged.
According to Israeli authorities, more than 1,400 people have been killed by Hamas commandos in Israel since October 7, most of them civilians. It is estimated that around 220 Israelis, foreigners or dual nationals, are being held hostage.
Hamas said on Wednesday that more than 6,500 people, mostly civilians, were killed by Israeli bombings carried out in retaliation for the attack.
Earlier in the day, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s highest authority, accused the United States of “somehow directing” Israel’s operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“The United States is the undeniable accomplice of the crimes” in Gaza, the supreme leader said in a speech in Tehran.
They have “the blood of the oppressed, of children, of patients, of women and others on their hands,” he added on the 19th day of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
On October 10, Ayatollah Khamenei denied his country’s involvement in the attack of unprecedented scale and violence, while reaffirming Iranian support “for Palestine.”
Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated on Wednesday that “the Palestinian nation” will emerge “victorious” from the conflict. “The future world is that of Palestine, not that of the Zionist regime,” he said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Tehran on Tuesday, saying the United States would respond “firmly” to any attack by “Iran or its proxies” in the Middle East.