News - Middle East: Iran's foreign minister has called for urgent international measures to protect Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, where thousands of minors have lost their lives amid Israel's ongoing genocidal war on the besieged territory.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a post on X social media platform on Monday, which marked World Children’s Day.

"As the United Nations secretary general has unequivocally said, Gaza has turned into a graveyard for children," Iran's top diplomat said, citing comments made by Antonio Guterres.

"Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children. Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly being killed or injured every day," the UN chief told reporters in early November, adding that the Israeli regime is simultaneously targeting "civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches, and UN facilities – including shelters. No one is safe."

"More than 5,500 Palestinian children have been martyred in the Zionist regime's attacks," Iran's foreign minister added.

"In the absence of practical and urgent measures by the international community to protect the lives of Palestinian children, World Children's Day will be [nothing more than] a big and deplorable tragedy," Amir-Abdollahian warned.

In a relevant development also on Monday, the Palestinian Ministry of Education said in a statement that more than 5,000 children, including over 3,000 students, have been killed since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on Gaza on October 7. On that day, the regime launched its brutal war on Gaza following a surprise operation by the territory's resistance groups in response to Israel's intensified crimes against Palestinian people.

“The scenes of the killing of children and students in the Gaza Strip violate all norms and conventions,” the ministry said, adding, “These horrific scenes, broadcast on television and the media, reveal the mentality of the Israeli occupation and its continued targeting of education" across the entire occupied territories, including the West Bank and the occupied city of al-Quds.

The Israeli war on Gaza has seen the regime simultaneously targeting civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches, and UN facilities, including shelters where displaced people have taken refuge.

Addressing the UN Security Council last week, the World Health Organization's Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a child was killed every 10 minutes in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Also earlier on Monday, Iran’s top human rights official used the occasion to slam international organizations and governments for their failure to protect children in Gaza.

"If they consider the children in Gaza to be part of the world’s children, it would be good for them to recognize the right of these oppressed children to a childhood, to continue to live, and to grow,” Secretary General of Iran's High Council for Human Rights Kazem Gharibabadi said in a post on X.

The plight of children in Gaza has drawn the attention of rights activists and anti-war groups around the world as protests are being held almost on a daily basis in cities in Western countries to press the Israeli regime to stop its massacre of women and children in the blockaded territory.

Source: Press TV