As Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu declared the 'state-of-war' after Hamas militants carried out the deadliest what Israel's Defence Forces (IDF) dubbed as "massacre", the world’s largest bloc of Muslim countries has condemned what it refers to as “Israeli military aggression”.
It accused the ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas of a "brutal" aggression, raised grave concerns over the situation in Palestine and militants occupied Gaza Strip and called it "violations of human rights" and a crime against humanity.
Over 700 Israeli killed in two days of war
The 57-member bloc went on to condemn “the Israeli military aggression that led to the fall of hundreds of martyrs and wounded among the Palestinian people.”
The statement from the Muslim body came despite 700 Israeli civilians and military personnel having been killed and hundreds kept hostage by the Hamas militant group. In a retaliatory step, IDF said it has also killed at least 400 terrorists who have either infiltrated in their territory.
Meanwhile, Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group claimed to have taken captive more than 130 people from inside Israel and brought them into Gaza, saying they would be traded for the release of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The announcement, though unconfirmed, was the first sign of the scope of abductions.
The captives are known to include soldiers and civilians, including women, children and older adults — mostly Israelis but also some people of other nationalities. The Israeli military said only that the number of captives is “significant.”
UAE comes in support of IDF
Besides OIC, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which had normalised its relations with Israel in 2020, condemned the attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians and called it a "serious and grave escalation."
"Civilians on both sides must always have full protection under international humanitarian law and must never be a target of conflict," the UAE foreign ministry in a statement released on Sunday.
News of the surprise invasion, with its haunting echoes of the 1973 Mideast War, sent millions of Israelis rushing to bomb shelters. Some in hard-hit communities were evacuated to protected spaces farther north.
Families who huddled in their basements had little idea what was unfolding above them but heard deeply disturbing sounds — not just the usual shriek of rockets and muffled bangs of explosions, they said, but the loud crackling of gunfire that indicated fighters were on the ground, and getting closer.
(With inputs from agency)
