UN official calls out double standards, bias in Israeli offensive on Gaza

By Gizem Nisa Cebi

ISTANBUL (AA) — The UN's special rapporteur on the right to housing has rebuked countries he accused of bias on Israel’s offensive on Gaza following a deadly attack by Tel Aviv on the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza.

"Countries that celebrate the release of four Israeli hostages without saying a word about the hundreds of Palestinians killed and thousands held in arbitrary detention by Israel, have lost moral credibility for generations and don’t deserve to be on any UN human rights body," Balakrishnan Rajagopal said on X about the attack that took place on Saturday.

Earlier, the Israeli army announced that it had launched attacks on various locations in the central part of the Gaza Strip and had successfully rescued four captives alive from two different areas.

Citing a US official, CNN reported that an American unit in Israel aided the efforts to rescue the hostages.

The Gaza-based Government Media Office said that at least 210 Palestinians were killed and more than 400 injured on Saturday in severe Israeli airstrikes targeting Nuseirat refugee camp, areas east of Deir al-Balah, and al-Bureij and al-Maghazi camps in central Gaza, coinciding with a sudden incursion of vehicles east and northwest of Nuseirat.

Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since a Hamas attack last Oct. 7 despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.

More than 36,800 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 83,500 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.