A Russia-backed UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire has fallen flat on its back as Israel presses on with its deadly bombardment of Gaza.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war while condemning both Hamas militants who carried out massacres in Israel and the response of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to bomb Gaza.
“Those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” Guterres said.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations jumped onto those remarks to call on the UN chief to resign.
Guterres on Wednesday rejected the attempt at “misrepresentations” of his Tuesday statement.
“I am shocked by the misrepresentations by some of my statement yesterday in the Security Council as if, as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas,” he said. “This is false. It was the opposite.”
“I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel,” he said Wednesday, repeating remarks he made the day before.
“Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians — or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.”
According to the Hamas run Ministry of Health more than 700 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza in just 24 hours on Tuesday.
