UN rapporteur says Israel's actions in Gaza echo Srebrenica, Rwanda massacres

By Feyzullah Yarimbas

ANKARA (AA) - Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, said on Monday that Israel's actions in Gaza are not much different from recent massacres in other parts of the world such as Srebrenica and Rwanda.

"It is not that different from other massacres of civilians if you look closer. Genocide is a process, not a single act. It must be prevented but in Gaza - as in Sebrenica and Rwanda before - the world is just letting it happen," Albanese said on X.

She was responding to a post which included a UN press release on unlawful killings in Gaza City at the hands of Israeli forces, which raises alarm about possible war crimes.

The Srebrenica massacre was the July 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslims in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War, while Rwanda saw the 1994 genocide in which more than 1 million people are estimated to have perished.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, killing more than 20,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, besides displacement and a trail of destruction.

The death toll from Hamas’s attack on Israel stands at 1,200.​​​​​​​

*Writing by Alperen Aktas in Istanbul