‘Genocide’ in Gaza must stop – Iraqi president to RT

There will be no rest for the Middle East without a sovereign Palestinian state, Abdul Latif Rashid has said

The Israeli “massacre” of the Palestinian population in Gaza has no justification and must be stopped immediately, Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid has said.

The goal of the government in Baghdad is to ensure that the Palestinians are given “complete self-determination,” and that the State of Palestine is recognized internationally and “plays its role in the region,” Rashid told RT’s Murad Gazdiev in an interview published on Thursday.

Iraq supports the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because without it, the Middle East “will not rest forever, and prosperity and development will be delayed for a long time,” he explained.

Discussing Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza, the president condemned what he described as a “massacre on Palestinian people,” insisting there is “no justification” for it.

“This genocide has to be stopped… We want to see the end of the war immediately,” Rashid said. The international community must act to provide the Palestinians with all the necessary humanitarian aid, he added.

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Israel bombs ‘Hamas compound’ in Gaza school

Early on Thursday, Israeli jets bombed a school in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, which was operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and served as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the fighting. At least 40 people were killed in the attack, the Gaza Government Media Office told Reuters.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed the strike, but claimed that it had targeted “terrorists [who] directed terror from the area of the school while exploiting it and using it as a shelter.” 

At least, 36,654 people have so far been killed and more than 83,309 others wounded in Israeli airstrikes and the ground offensive in Gaza, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry. Israel launched its operation in response to a cross-border incursion by Palestinian armed group Hamas last October, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

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