‘‘This story doesn’t start from day one. It starts from nine months ago – the day I learned I was going to be a mother.”
In a message to mark one year since the Hamas-led terror attack during which more than 1,250 Israelis and foreign nationals were brutally killed on 7 October, the UN Secretary-General has called on the international community to loudly condemn those “abhorrent acts” which have triggered a shocking wave of violence across the region.
The UN chief has strongly condemned the killing of several Palestinians, including women and children, who died when a residential building in Tulkarem camp in the West Bank was hit by Israeli airstrikes on Thursday night.
Some Palestinian orphans in Gaza have gotten a glimmer of hope as the tragedies triggered by the grinding nearly year-long war continue to deplete the Strip.
As Lebanon suffered another night of heavy Israeli bombing, UN humanitarians and partners described how people desperate to flee the violence found the country’s main border crossing into Syria cut by a new dawn strike, forcing them to skirt “a huge crater” and rubble on foot, to reach the other side.
Peacekeepers positioned along the “Blue Line” of separation between Israel and Lebanon remain committed to their mandate, and will remain in place until conditions allow, the UN’s peacekeeping chief said on Thursday.
People in Lebanon uprooted by Israeli airstrikes including in central Beirut have described being forced to flee “total destruction”, amid fresh reports of Hezbollah projectile attacks into Israel and close-quarter clashes along the UN-patrolled line of separation between the two countries.
Security Council members met in emergency session on Tuesday morning in New York with the Middle East on the brink of all-out war. App users can reprise our live coverage here.
Hours after Iran fired a reported 200 missiles at Israel in response to Israeli military incursions in southern Lebanon raising fears of a wider Middle East escalation, UN human rights chief Volker Türk insisted on Wednesday that “peace must prevail” in the Middle East, while UN Member States meeting in Geneva reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and beyond.
With war ramping up across the Middle East on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appealed for the violence to end now.
