40 Percent of the 10,569 Death Victims in Gaza are Children, UN Secretary General Says There is Something Wrong with Israeli Military Operations

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. (Source: PBB)

JAKARTA - United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that the number of civilians killed in the Gaza Strip showed that something was wrong with Israel's military operation against Palestinian Hamas militants.

Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas, which controls Gaza, after the militants killed around 1,400 people and took more than 240 hostages in an October 7 attack.

In response, Israel attacked Gaza by land, sea and air, and completely blockaded the enclave with a population of 2.3 million.

The Palestinian Authority said that to date around 10,569 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, with 40 percent of them being children.

"There are violations by Hamas when they have human shields. But when we look at the number of civilians killed in (Israel's) military operations, something is clearly wrong," Guterres told Reuters, as quoted on November 9.

Israel says it targeted Hamas, not civilians, accusing the Iran-backed militants of using residents as human shields.

"It is also important for Israel to understand that it is against Israel's interests to see every day an ugly picture of the enormous humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people," said Guterres.

"That doesn't help Israel in terms of global public opinion," he stressed.

Despite strongly criticizing Hamas' attacks on Israel, Guterres said "we need to differentiate, Hamas is one thing and the Palestinian people are another."

"If we don't make a difference, I think humanity itself will lose its meaning," Guterres explained.

Guterres compared the number of children killed in Gaza with the number of victims of conflicts around the world that he reports annually to the UN Security Council. On Monday, he said Gaza was becoming a "graveyard for children."

"Every year, the highest number of child murders committed by one actor in all the conflicts we have seen is in the hundreds," explained Guterres.

"In recent days we have seen thousands of children killed in Gaza, which means there is something wrong in the way the military operation is being carried out," he added.

The UN report on children and armed conflict contains a list intended to embarrass parties to the conflict, in the hope of encouraging them to implement measures to protect children. This has long been controversial, and diplomats say Israel has exerted pressure in recent years in an effort to keep it off the list.

In June, Guterres added the Russian armed forces to the list of perpetrators of abuses, after the UN verified that they killed 136 children in Ukraine in 2022. The next report will be released in mid-2024.