GENEVA: The UN rights chief on Tuesday condemned Israel’s ground assault on Gaza City as “utterly unacceptable,” demanding an end to the “carnage” and warning of growing evidence of genocide in the Palestinian territory.
“It is absolutely clear that this carnage must stop,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said when asked about the launch of Israel’s long-anticipated ground assault on Gaza’s largest city.
“The whole world screams for peace. Palestinians, Israelis scream for peace. Everyone wants an end to this, and what we see is a further escalation which is totally and utterly unacceptable,” he said.
Turk highlighted that in recent days “we have seen expanding attacks in the northwestern parts of Gaza, where the population had sought shelter from previous attacks.”
He decried in particular “the ongoing bombardment of residential buildings, buildings that have served as shelters for people who have been displaced multiple times.”
“These attacks need to stop.”
He pointed out that the Israeli military “repeatedly claimed that it is targeting so-called terrorist infrastructure.”
“So far, we haven’t seen any evidence of this,” he stressed, emphasizing that “under the rules of war, an attack may never be targeted at civilians who are not taking part in hostilities.”
The UN rights chief stressed that “the people of Gaza cannot sustain yet another intensification of violence and destruction and killings and lack of humanitarian assistance that needs to come.”
“I can only think of what it means for women, malnourished children, for people with disabilities, if they are again attacked in this way,” he said.
Turk’s comments came after an independent team of UN investigators published a report concluding that Israel was committing genocide in its war in Gaza, which erupted following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack inside Israel.
“We see the piling up of war crime after war crime after war crime, of crime against humanity, and potentially even more,” Turk said.
“It’s for the court to decide whether it’s genocide or not, and we see the evidence mounting.”
UN rights chief demands end to ‘carnage’ amid Israel’s Gaza City assault
https://arab.news/vnhfh
UN rights chief demands end to ‘carnage’ amid Israel’s Gaza City assault
- ‘The whole world screams for peace. Palestinians, Israelis scream for peace’
- ‘Everyone wants an end to this, and what we see is a further escalation which is totally and utterly unacceptable’
US military visits contested area in northern Syria to defuse rising tensions
- US has good relations with both sides and has urged calm
DEIR HAFER, Syria: A US military delegation arrived in a contested area of northern Syria on Friday following rising tensions between the Syrian government and a Kurdish-led force that controls much of the northeast.
The US has good relations with both sides and has urged calm. A spokesperson for the US military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier in the day, scores of people carrying their belongings arrived in government-held areas in northern Syria ahead of a possible offensive by Syrian troops on territory held by Kurdish-led fighters east of the city of Aleppo.
Many of the civilians who fled were seen using side roads to reach government-held areas because the main highway was blocked by a checkpoint in the town of Deir Hafer normally controlled by the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.
The Syrian army said late Wednesday that civilians would be able to evacuate through the “humanitarian corridor” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and then extended the evacuation period another day. The announcement appeared to signal plans for an offensive against the SDF in the area.
There have been limited exchanges of fire between the two sides.
Men, women and children arrived in cars and pickup trucks that were packed with bags of clothes, mattresses and other belongings. They were met by local officials who directed them to shelters.
In other areas, people crossed canals on small boats and crossed a heavily damaged pedestrian bridge to reach the side held by government forces.
The SDF closed the main highway but more than 11,000 people were still able to reach government-held areas on other roads, Syrian state TV reported.
A US military convoy arrived in Deir Hafer in the early afternoon accompanied by SDF officials. Associated Press journalists saw SDF leaders and American officials enter one of the government buildings, where they met inside for more than an hour before departing the area.
Inside Deir Hafer, many shops were closed and people stayed home.
“When I saw people leaving I came here,” said Umm Talal, who arrived in the government-held area with her husband and children. She added that the road appeared safe and her husband plans to return to their home.
Abu Mohammed said he came from the town of Maskana after hearing the government had opened a safe corridor, “only to be surprised when we arrived at Deir Hafer and found it closed.”
SDF fighters were preventing people from crossing through Syria’s main east-west highway and forcing them to take a side road, he said.
Kortay Khalil, an SDF official at the Deir Hafer the checkpoint, said they had closed it because the government closed other crossings.
“This crossing was periodically closed even before these events, but people are leaving through other routes, and we are not preventing them,” he said. “If we wanted to prevent them, no one would be able to leave the area.”
The tensions in the Deir Hafer area come after several days of intense clashes last week in Aleppo, previously Syria’s largest city and commercial center, that ended with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters from three neighborhoods north of the city that were then taken over by government forces.
The fighting broke out as negotiations stalled between Damascus and the SDF over an agreement reached in March to integrate their forces and for the central government to take control of institutions including border crossings and oil fields in the northeast.
The US special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, posted on X on Friday that Washington remains in close contact with all parties in Syria, “working around the clock to lower the temperature, prevent escalation, and return to integration talks between the Syrian government and the SDF.”
The SDF for years has been the main US partner in Syria in fighting against the Daesh group, but Turkiye considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with Kurdish separatist insurgents in Turkiye.
