United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday the civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip has been proven that there was “clearly something wrong” with Israel’s military operations against Palestinian Hamas militants.
“There are violations by Hamas when they have human shields, but when you look at the number of civilians killed in military operations, something is clearly wrong,” Guterres told Portal Next.
Israel has vowed to crack down on Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, after militants killed 1,400 people and took more than 240 hostage in an Oct. 7 attack. Israel has attacked Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground invasion.
According to the Palestinian authorities, 10,569 people have already died, 40% of them children.
“It is also important to make it clear to Israel that it is against its interests to see the horrific picture of the dramatic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people every day.”Guterres said. “That doesn’t help Israel in the eyes of the world.”
Guterres compared the number of children killed in Gaza to the number of victims in conflicts around the world, which he reports on annually.
“Each year the highest number of murders of children by any of the actors in any conflict we experience is in the hundreds at most,” he said.
“In just a few days, thousands of children have died in Gaza, which means that something is clearly wrong with the conduct of military operations as well,” he said.
The UN report on children and armed conflict contains a list aimed at shaming parties to the conflict in the hope of pressuring them to implement measures to protect them. It has long been a controversial issue, and diplomats say there has been pressure on Israel to remove it from the list in recent years. The next report is scheduled for the middle of next year.