ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday condemned Israel’s recent strikes on Iran and denounced the ongoing war in Gaza as a “man-made catastrophe,” using his address at the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) summit to call out what he described as growing regional instability driven by foreign aggression.
Sharif was speaking in the Azerbaijani city of Khankendi, where heads of state from the 10-member ECO bloc convened for the group’s 17th summit. The ECO, founded in 1985 by Iran, Turkiye, and Pakistan, includes members from Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. The 2025 summit is focusing on boosting intra-regional trade, connectivity, climate funding and sustainable development.
“My dear brothers and sisters, forces of instability and chaos continue to destabilize our region for their own geopolitical agendas,” Sharif said in his address.
“The unlawful, unjustified and uncalled for Israeli attack on Iran, a brotherly country and fellow ECO member state, [is] the most recent manifestation of this dangerous trend … Pakistan strongly condemns this act of Israeli aggression.”
Some 935 people were killed in Iran during the 12-day air war with Israel, based on the latest forensic data, a spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary said on Monday, according to state media. Among the dead were 38 children and 132 women.
Israel launched the air war on June 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. A tenuous ceasefire is holding.
Sharif also directed global attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“Unfortunately the world has been witnessing an unprecedented man-made catastrophe in Gaza, a region that has descended into an abyss of perpetual suffering,” he said. “It is as if humanity no longer exists while famine looms large, humanitarian workers including UN personnel are being attacked by Israel with impunity to deliberately cut off the only lifeline of the helpless and starving people of Gaza.”
He reiterated Pakistan’s support for oppressed populations across the Muslim world, including Palestinians and Kashmiris.
“Pakistan stands firmly against those who perpetrate barbaric acts against innocent people anywhere in the world, whether in Gaza or Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir or Iran,” he said.
The latest war in Gaza began when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel on October 7 2023, killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 251 hostages back to Gaza in a surprise attack that led to Israel’s single deadliest day.
Israel’s subsequent military assault has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry, displaced almost the whole 2.3 million population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis. More than 80 percent of the territory is now an Israeli-militarized zone or under displacement orders, according to the UN.
