Israel's conduct of war in Gaza 'fundamentally wrong:' UN chief

There was something “fundamentally wrong” with how Israel conducted its military operation in the Gaza Strip and there are “strong reasons to believe” that war crimes have been committed, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Reuters on Wednesday.

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“I think there was something fundamentally wrong in the way this operation was conducted with total neglect in relation to the deaths of civilians and to the destruction of Gaza," Guterres said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York.

“The objective was to destroy Hamas. Gaza is destroyed, but Hamas is not yet destroyed. So there is something fundamentally wrong with the way this is conducted,” he told Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni. More than 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry, during the two-year-old conflict between Israel and Hamas.

When asked if war crimes had been committed, Guterres said: “There are strong reasons to believe that that possibility might be a reality.” A fragile truce has been in place since Oct.IO, but Israel has continued to strike Gaza and conduct demolitions against what it says is Hamas infrastructure. Hamas and Israel have traded blame for violating the US-backed agreement.

Guterres praised the United States — an ally of Israel — for being instrumental in improving aid access in Gaza, where a global hunger monitor said in August that famine had taken hold.