Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called the war between Israel and Hamas “genocide” as almost 3,000 children and over 1,700 women have been killed in Israeli strikes.
Brazil’s state-owned news outlet Agencia Brasil quoted Silva saying, “It’s not a war, it’s a genocide that has killed nearly 2,000 children who have nothing to do with this war, they are victims of this war.
“I don’t know how a human being is capable of war knowing that the result of that war is the death of innocent children.”
Read more on Israel-Hamas war:
Al-Qassam Brigades fire long range missiles from Gaza to the tourist town of Eilat
The number of foreign hostages killed in Gaza due to Israeli strikes is estimated to be around 50 who were taken to Gaza on 7 October, Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, said on Thursday.
The Hamas run health ministry in the Gaza Strip has said on Thursday that Israeli strikes has killed at least 7,028 people.
The ministry said that around 2,913 children and 1,709 women have been killed which is the highest death count in the war since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres told a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York that Palestinians have been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation” by Israel and the attacks by Hamas on 7 October “did not happen in a vacuum.”
Guterres said he is concerned “clear violations of international humanitarian law” had been committed by Israel in Gaza which has left almost 6,000 Palestinians dead and many more thousands wounded following Israeli strikes.
Gaza is around 27 miles long and about 7.5 miles wide and many have claimed that the Gaza Strip is the world’s largest concentration camp which is home to 2.3 million Palestinians.