GENEVA: A UN committee has accused Israel of severe breaches of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza had a catastrophic impact on them and are among the worst violations in recent history.

Palestinian health authorities say 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign in response to cross-border attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7. Of those killed in Gaza, at least 11,355 are children, Palestinian data shows, and thousands more are injured.

“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” said Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice chair of the Committee.

“I don’t think we have seen a violation that is so massive before as we’ve seen in Gaza. These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see,” he said.

Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, sent a large delegation to the UN hearings in Geneva between September 3-4.

They argued that the treaty did not apply in Gaza or the West Bank and that it was committed to respecting international humanitarian law. It says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating Hamas.

The committee praised Israel for attending but said it “deeply regrets the state party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations.”

The 18-member UN Committee monitors countries’ compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child — a widely adopted treaty that protects them from violence and other abuses.

In its conclusions, it called on Israel to provide urgent assistance to thousands of children maimed or injured by the war, provide support for orphans, and allow more medical evacuations from Gaza.

The UN body has no means of enforcing its recommendations, although countries generally aim to comply.

During the hearings, the UN experts also asked many questions about Israeli children, including details about those taken hostage by Hamas, to which Israel’s delegation gave extensive responses.

RABAT: More than 150 people have appeared in a Moroccan court for alleged incitement of illegal migration, a government spokesman said on Thursday, after a failed mass attempt to reach Spanish territory.
On Sunday, Moroccan police, who fired tear gas, pushed back hundreds of people who headed toward the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, an AFP photographer said, after social media posts encouraged crossing attempts.
“In the framework of the struggle against calls for clandestine immigration, 152 people appeared before a judge,” government spokesman Mustapha Baitas told a press conference.
He said a total of around 3,000 people had tried to illegally enter Ceuta after calls on social media, but all the crossing attempts failed.
A police source previously told AFP that 60 people were arrested between Monday and Wednesday last week for “fabricating and disseminating false information on social media” that encouraged “the organization of collective illegal immigration operations.”
Ceuta and its sister territory of Melilla, wedged on the North African kingdom’s Mediterranean coast, have long been a magnet for irregular migrants, being the only European Union territories on the African continent.
Those heading on Sunday toward the village of Fnideq, which abuts Ceuta, included Moroccans and migrants from other parts of Africa, including some minors, the AFP photographer said.
According to official statistic, one in four Moroccan young people aged 15-24 is neither in the job market, nor in education or training.
The Moroccan interior ministry has said that in August alone, authorities blocked more than 11,300 attempts to cross into Ceuta and about 3,300 into Melilla.
In June, 2022, at least 23 people died when around 2,000 people, many of them Sudanese, stormed the frontier at Melilla attempting to cross.
The main route out of Morocco for irregular migrants hoping to reach Spain remains by sea.
More than 22,300 migrant arrivals were registered this year by August 15 in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, a 126 percent increase from 2023.