THE Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip says Israeli forces have killed more than 2,000 civilians in the northern part of the besieged territory, after the occupying regime launched a full-scale extermination and ethnic cleansing campaign there 38 days ago.
Ismail al-Thawabta, head of Gaza’s Government Media Office, made the remarks on Tuesday, adding that the majority of those killed in the ongoing Israeli aggression are children, women and the elderly.
He further denounced Israeli actions as a campaign of mass extermination against Palestinians in Gaza, particularly in the north, calling on the international community to promptly intervene and stop Israel’s genocidal war on the blockaded territory.
‘Organised genocide’: People in northern Gaza being starved, bombed, exterminated
Israeli regime has launched a full-scale extermination and ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza with thousands of people forced to evacuate, including doctors.
Thawabta also held the United States, the United Kingdom, and several European countries responsible for the ongoing violence in Gaza, accusing them of complicity in policies of ‘starvation and genocide’.
He also accused Israel of distributing ‘false maps’ showing expanded ‘safe zones’ for civilians in Gaza, saying these areas are frequently targeted with bombs and missiles, resulting in civilian casualties.
Back in October, the Israeli regime launched a full-scale extermination and ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza with thousands of people forced to evacuate, including doctors.
No food has entered northern Gaza since then as the Israeli regime continues to weaponise starvation against the Palestinian people in order to force them to leave.
Israel has adopted a ‘starve or leave’ policy to force Palestinians out of northern Gaza, says a media group.
Journalists on the ground in northern Gaza, including in Jabalia, have reported about Israeli tanks approaching civilian areas, artillery shelling intensifying and quadcopters controlling the movement of people as they run helter-skelter for shelter.
According to reports from northern Gaza, Israeli forces have burned schools and attacked hospitals and medical staff. They have killed scores of people and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) has already warned that women and children comprise most of those killed in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s campaign of genocide in the besieged Palestinian territory.
- The United States is to maintain the supply of lethal military aid to Israel despite the regime’s genocide that has claimed the lives of at least 43,700 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The US State Department affirmed on Tuesday that the country does not plan to dial down the weapons flow to the Israeli military despite massive global outcry.
US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters that he did not have any changes to the US policy on the issue to announce.
The US is seeking to retain the lethal aid, despite the regime ignoring a so-called ‘30-day deadline’ issued by Washington for Tel Aviv to increase aid flow into the war-hit Palestinian territory.
The country’s retention of the military aid comes as it had presumably warned the regime that it would revisit the support in case Tel Aviv failed to meet the purported deadline.
By doing so, the United States would be trampling on its own laws that forbid it from providing military aid to the parties committing ‘gross violations of human rights’.
Decades of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric in the US have fostered the dehumanisation of people from West Asia, fuelling indifference toward the genocide in Gaza, says an American activist.
The US, which would provide the regime with more than $3 billion in military aid on an annual basis, has sent it $17.9 billion in weapons support since last October when the regime began bringing Gaza under a genocidal war.
As much as 70 per cent of the fatalities of the brutal military onslaught comprise women and children, with minors between the ages of five and nine forming the majority of the victims, the United Nations has announced.
The war has also wounded more than 103,400 others.
Also on Tuesday, Ilze Brands Kehris, the UN assistant secretary general for human rights, called on all states providing weapons to the regime to reassess those arrangements.
He also warned that there was ‘constant and continued interference with the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance, which has fallen to some of the lowest levels in a year’.
The world body’s Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Joyce Msuya, meanwhile, has condemned the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, describing Israeli violations against Palestinians as ‘acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes’.
Msuya, a top UN official, denounced the regime for its intensified indiscriminate attacks on northern Gaza, where Israeli aggression has either damaged or destroyed ‘more than 70 per cent of civilian housing’.
In a related development, eight international aid agencies, including Save the Children and Refugees International, wrote a statement, regretting that the regime had not only failed to meet the criteria that would indicate enhancement of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, ‘but concurrently took actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza.’
- Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is urging implementation of relevant management strategies towards reduction of the cost of Iran’s standing differences with the United States.
‘We have to implement relevant management strategies so that the cost of Iran’s differences with the United States can be reduced,’ the top diplomat said on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
He said channels of communication between the two countries are constantly there.
The official, however, noted that some of the Islamic Republic’s differences with the US were ‘very substantive and foundational’.
‘Those differences may not be solvable, but we have to adopt relevant management courses of action so that their costs and standing tensions can be reduced.’
Araghchi made the comments a day after warning Washington against resumption of its so-called ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Tehran.
Araghchi has warned the US against the resumption of its so-called ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Tehran, stressing Washington’s previous attempts to oppress Iran have only failed.
The first version of the American policy was met with ‘Maximum Resistance’ from Tehran, resulting in Washington’s ‘Maximum Defeat’, he wrote in a post on X.
‘Attempting ‘Maximum Pressure 2.0’ will only result in ‘Maximum Defeat 2.0’. Better idea, try: ‘Maximum Wisdom – for the benefit of al,’ the foreign minister wrote.
The US adopted the policy under former president Donald Trump, unilaterally leaving a historic and multi-party nuclear agreement with Iran, and resuming the illegal sanctions that the deal had lifted.
The sanctions, preserved under the administration of US President Joe Biden, have restricted the financial channels necessary to pay for basic goods and medicine, undermining supply chains by limiting the number of suppliers willing to facilitate sales of humanitarian goods to the Islamic Republic.
Trump, who has been re-elected the United States president, now seeks to ramp up the economic measures even further, despite warnings and pieces of advice issued by Iran against fuelling the tensions between the countries.
Also on Wednesday, Araghchi asserted that the Islamic Republic continued its constructive cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear body.
He hoped that Iranian officials would be able to reach some agreements with the agency during an upcoming visit to the country by its Director General Rafael Grossi.
