No justification for indiscriminate killings in Gaza; this is Israel's 'barbarism': Turkish FM

There is no justification for the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip, Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, said on Wednesday, describing the ongoing Israeli army attacks on Palestinian territory as “barbarism”, Anadolu Agency reports.

“There is a narrative that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has constructed, framing the entire process with some events that occurred on 7 October and presenting it to the West based on what happened on that day. He (Netanyahu) narrates the incident as’ ‘I have been killed. The perpetrators are barbarians.’ “So it doesn’t matter what happened to him,” Fidan told reporters in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

“Turkiye’s stance completely overturns the strategy he presented, and the narrative that the West has bought into,” he noted.

Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas, on 7 October.

At least 22,185 Palestinians have since been killed and 57,035 others injured, according to Gaza’s health authorities, while nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Fidan emphasised that Hamas’s actions toward civilians could be criticised, and Turkiye does not shy away from doing so.

“But we should not overlook the issue of the indiscriminate killing of Gazans by using them as an excuse,” he said.

“If you define Hamas based on its actions against civilians, the same rule should also apply to Israel. So, you should define Israel in the same way as well. These are the issues to which they cannot respond,” the Foreign Minister said.

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