ISLAMABAD: The speaker of the Pakistan National Assembly, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, has strongly denounced Israel for its “genocide” of Palestinians, including women, children, and the elderly, state-run Radio Pakistan reported on Monday. 

Sadiq was speaking at the 148th Inter-parliamentary Union Assembly being held in Geneva.

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed thousands, caused a humanitarian catastrophe and raised the chances of a wider conflict across the Middle East. The Health Ministry in Gaza said the Israeli air and ground campaign had killed more than 31,988 people and injured 74,188 by March 21. The ministry has said children under 18 make up more than 40 percent of those killed.

“Speaker expressed disappointment over inaction of the international community, particularly the UN Security Council, and called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and justice for Palestine,” Radio Pakistan said, reporting on Sadiq’s speech. 

“He also expressed unwavering solidarity and pledged support for Palestinians in their just cause for a viable, independent, and contiguous state based on the pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.”

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has said as of March 16, up to 1.7 million people, or over 75 percent of the population, had been displaced since Oct. 7 when the war began, some of them several times. More than 1 million displaced are in Rafah on Gaza’s southernmost fringe close to the boundary with Egypt.

More than 60 percent of housing units have been destroyed, along with 392 education facilities, 123 ambulances and 184 mosques, it said. 

Children are dying of starvation in northern Gaza, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X on March 4, citing a WHO team that visited two hospitals.

Famine is imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July, the world’s hunger watchdog, known as the Integrated Food-Security Phase Classification (IPC), said on March 18.

It said 70 percent of people in parts of northern Gaza were suffering the most severe level of food shortage, more than triple the 20 percent threshold to be considered famine. In all, 1.1 million Gazans, about half the population, were experiencing “catastrophic” shortages of food.

With inputs from Reuters