MONITORING (SW) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has added Israel’s military to a global list of offenders that have committed violations against children; a decision that angered Israel.
Israel had been told it is being placed on the list in the secretary-general’s annual report on children in armed conflict, to be sent to the UN Security Council coming Friday, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric told a press briefing.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were also added to the list, according to a diplomatic source, along with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), CNN news agency reported.
In response to UN announcement on the addition of Israel to a global blacklist of countries and groups that have violated the rights of children during armed conflicts, Israel has called the decision “shameful”.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan recorded a video of himself making a phone call from his office, apparently to a UN official, and leaked part of it on social media.
In the video, Erdan expressed outrage at the UN decision, calling the IDF “the most moral army in the world.”
“The only one who is blacklisted today is the secretary-general, whose decisions since the war started, and even before, are rewarding terrorists and incentivizing them to use children for terror acts… Shame on him!”
Israel’s inclusion on the list comes after eight months of war in Gaza, in which more than 15,500 children have been killed, at least 12,000 children injured and around 3000 remained with limbs amputated.
Israel rescues four hostages in Gaza raid that Hamas says kills 210 Palestinians
Israeli forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas since October in a raid in Gaza on Saturday that Palestinian officials said killed more than 200 people, one of the single bloodiest Israeli assaults of the eight-month-old war.
The hostage rescue operation and an intense accompanying air assault took place in central Gaza’s al-Nuseirat, a densely built-up and often embattled area in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian territory’s ruling Islamist group.
An Israeli military spokesperson said the operation took place in the heart of a residential neighbourhood in Nuseirat where Hamas had kept the hostages in two separate apartment blocks. Israel’s forces came under intense fire during the assault and responded by firing “from the air and from the street,” the spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said.
“We know about under 100 (Palestinian) casualties. I don’t know how many from them are terrorists,” he said in a briefing with journalists. An Israeli special forces commander was killed during the operation, a police statement said.
Gazan paramedics and residents said the assault killed scores of people and left mangled bodies of men, women and children strewn around a marketplace and a mosque.
Israel named the rescued hostages as Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41. They were taken to hospital for medical checks and were in good health, the military said.
They were all kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the deadly raid by Hamas-led Palestinian militants on Israeli towns and villages near Gaza on Oct. 7, which precipitated the devastating war.
Hamas’ raid killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed at least 36,801 Palestinians, according to an updated tally by the territory’s health ministry on Saturday.
