UN, January 13. /TASS/. The flooding of tunnels in the Gaza Strip can be considered genocide, Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya said on Friday.
"Amid a catastrophic humanitarian situation, Israel’s plans to flood the tunnels in Gaza with sea water arouse a strong concern. According to various estimates, one can speak about the flooding of 1,300 corridors," he said at a meeting of the UN Security Council on the situation in the Middle East.
"Such actions [as flooding of tunnels in Gaza] can be qualified as one of the elements of genocide, according to <...> the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," he added.
The Russian diplomat added that the consequences of these steps "will last for centuries." "The implementation of such a plan threatens not only a large-scale environmental disaster, but will also make the territory of the enclave virtually uninhabitable," Nebenzya stressed.
Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Israeli authorities are considering the possibility of flooding the system of underground tunnels, in which, according to the Israeli military, fighters of the Palestinian Hamas movement are hiding, with sea water, which could lead to an environmental disaster and further worsen the situation with fresh water in enclave.