Pope Francis decries deaths of Gaza children in Israel bombings

Pope Francis, on Friday, decried the deaths of Palestinian children in Israeli military strikes in Gaza, calling bombings of schools, on the “presumption” of striking Hamas militants, “ugly”,  Reuters reports.

On the flight back to Rome from Singapore, the Pontiff expressed doubt that either Israel or Hamas, now at war for eleven months, were seeking to end the conflict. “I am sorry to have to say this,” the Pope said. “But I do not think that they are taking steps to make peace.”

Francis was speaking at a press conference with journalists after a demanding 12-day tour across South-east Asia and Oceania. He said he speaks on the phone with members of a Catholic parish in Gaza “every day” and “they tell me ugly things, difficult things”.

Please, when you see the bodies of killed children, when you see that, under the presumption that some guerrillas are there, a school is bombed, this is ugly

the 87-year-old Pontiff said. “It is ugly.”

The Pope, who has supported calls for a ceasefire in the conflict and for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, said “sometimes I think it’s a war that is too much, too much”.

The Israel-Palestine war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on 7 October, when the group killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. The resulting Israeli military campaign has reduced the Strip to rubble and killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

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.

The United Nations said, on Thursday, that the war has left Gaza’s economy “in ruins”.

The Pope spoke about a range of other issues during the 40-minute press conference. He criticised both former US President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’s policies, and said US Catholics would have to “choose the lesser evil” when they vote in November, without elaborating.

READ: ‘There is unfair amount of focus on Israel in UN,’ says US envoy