FOCUS TURNS AWAY FROM GAZA
Israel has faced growing global opposition to the relentless war that has reduced vast areas of Gaza to rubble, while its 2.4 million people have suffered under an Israeli siege that has blocked most water, food, medicines and other vital supplies.
Guterres said Israel’s offensive had created a “humanitarian hellscape” for civilians trapped in Gaza. He said that Israel had made “limited progress” on allowing more aid into the territory, calling for more to be done.
Yet Iran’s attack on Israel “is succeeding in taking the focus, particularly the media spotlight, off of the Gaza famine and the Gaza war”, Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a Middle East and North Africa specialist at Cambridge University, told AFP.
The war started after Hamas launched their unprecedented attack on Oct 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also took about 250 hostages. Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,970 people in Gaza, mostly women and children according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
