CARACAS, October 24. /TASS/. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has called on the international community to move and put an end to the genocide against the Palestinian people as he proposed convening a global conference to discuss peace and establish a Palestinian state.

"The world must raise its voice against the genocide, as this is not a war but genocide against the noble Palestinian people," the Venezuelan leader told Venezolana de Television on Monday as he said that mosques as well as Catholic and Orthodox churches of Christians were being shelled.

"We are calling on all Christians of the world <…> I am asking my Christian brothers, the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church of Venezuela and the whole world to raise their voices and stop the genocide against the Palestinian people and the people in the Gaza Strip," Maduro said. He called for convening a global conference "to return the right to peace, territory, independence and their own state to the Palestinians."

The Venezuelan president said his country had sent 30 metric tons of humanitarian aid to Palestine as he pledged further efforts to help the Palestinians.

Tensions in the Middle East flared up again on October 7 when Hamas militants launched a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian movement described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total siege of Gaza and started carrying out strikes on the Palestinian enclave, as well as on certain areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.

More than 3,400 Palestinians have been killed and over 12,000 of others have been injured in the conflict. In Israel, roughly 1,500 people have lost their lives with more than 4,500 people being wounded.