ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday condemned Israeli strikes on Gaza schools and shelters, the foreign office said, adding that eight educational institutes being utilized as a shelter by Palestinians had been bombed in the last 10 days.
At least 25 people were killed and dozens more wounded earlier this week when Israeli forces targeted dozens of Palestinians gathered outside the Al-Awda school in Abasan, a city in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis governorate. Across Gaza, this was the fourth strike on as many schools used as shelters in four days, killing at least 49 people in total, according to medics and officials in the territory.
“Pakistan also condemns in the strongest terms the continued genocidal barrage by Israel on the schools and shelters in Gaza,” Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a weekly press briefing on Friday. “Over the last 10 days, they have attacked eight schools being used as a shelter by the displaced.”
The statement said the “atrocious attack” on the tents of displaced persons in the Khan Yunus area had killed many Palestinian women and children taking refuge there. Targeting a safe zone camp violated international humanitarian law, the foreign office said, condemning measures taken by Israel against the recreation of a viable Palestinian state and saying Israel had no right too decide the future of lands belonging to the Palestinians.
The statement said the only “just solution” to the Palestinian question was the creation of a sovereign state of Palestine based on 1967 borders.
Pakistan has frequently condemned Israel’s military offensive in Palestine following the start of the war in October last year and has for decades backed the demand for an independent and contiguous Palestinian State with pre-1967 borders and Jerusalem as its capital, per United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) resolutions.
The upsurge in fighting, bombardment and displacement in Gaza takes place as talks are set to resume in Qatar toward a truce and hostage release deal in the war now grinding on into its tenth month.
Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel sparked the war in which at least 38,295 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, have been killed, according to Palestinian authorities. Israel has also imposed a punishing siege on Gaza’s 2.4 million people, eased only by sporadic aid deliveries.