UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Thursday welcomed the Security Council call for pauses in the fighting in Gaza where “doctors operate on screaming children without anaesthetic, using mobile phones for light”, before appealing directly to the warring sides to lay down their weapons.
Speaking in Geneva, the High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the parties to the conflict to “create the political space for a path out of this horror”.
Mr. Türk condemned the widespread targeting of civilians in the past five weeks of hostilities and urged accountability for gross rights violations.
He stressed that attacks directed at “hospitals, schools, markets and bakeries” as well as collective punishment “in the case of Israel’s blockade and siege imposed on Gaza” are prohibited under international humanitarian law.
So too is “aiming indiscriminate projectiles into southern Israel” by Palestinian armed groups, hostage-taking and the “use of civilians to shield locations from military operations”. UN NEWS