UNITED NATIONS, September 28. /TASS/. Violence has spread far beyond the area of Arab-Israeli confrontation, and is destabilizing the situation in other regions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian issue.
"There is an unprecedented level of confrontation in the occupied Palestinian territory and in the Lebanese-Israeli border area. This conflict is also echoed in other parts of the region, including the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden," Lavrov said. "Pockets of instability persist across a wide area of the Middle East and North Africa. The spiral of violence has gone far beyond the zone of Arab-Israeli confrontation, destabilizing the situation not only in the regions I have mentioned, but also in the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and entire North Africa. The cornerstone of these crisis processes was and is the unresolved Palestinian question.
"At the epicenter of the current confrontation is the Gaza Strip, where the latest round of hostilities that began last October has already become the bloodiest one in the long series of Arab-Israeli wars," the minister said. "The number of people killed has topped 41,000. The number of wounded and missing people is approaching 100,000. Most of the victims are civilians from the enclave, including many women, children, and the elderly."
He said the situation is rapidly deteriorating amid the fighting and Israel's siege of the enclave. "The Strip become the largest open-air prison," the minister went on to say.
"I want everyone to remember our invariable position: There are no excuses for the October 7 terrorist attack, but subjecting all Palestinians to collective punishment is unacceptable," Lavrov said. "I mentioned the figures of dead civilians: 41,000 in the year since October 7. That is more than double the number of civilian casualties on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine in the 10 years since the bloody coup in February 2014. Double as many Palestinians have been killed over one year, compared with civilian casualties on both sides of the Ukraine conflict in 10 years.".