DUBAI, October 26. /TASS/. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to take measures to immediately protect the rights of the Palestinians and hold Israel responsible for war crimes it has committed, the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).

In a letter to Volker Turk, the Iranian minister condemned "the Zionist regime’s gross and systematic violation of the Palestinians’ human rights," as he said that Tehran expected the United Nations to take steps to immediately halt the violence and hold those who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity to account. "This type of impunity <…> has emboldened it [the Israeli regime] to commit crimes. The international community, including the highest UN human rights body, has to seriously fulfill its duty of holding the Zionist regime to account," Iran’s top diplomat said in his letter.

According to Abdollahian, the rhetoric by the Israeli authorities along with Israel’s ongoing attacks in the Gaza Strip indicate that this is "a campaign for the genocide of the Palestinian people." "The attacks by the Zionist regime have become so intensified that they show they are aimed at the mass killing of the Palestinian people in Gaza," he said as he emphasized that "the forced displacement of the Palestinian people" by Israel and its military actions in Gaza were "in stark contradiction with international law." "Palestinians are not safe anywhere in Gaza, because the Israeli regime imposed a 'total blockade' on the tiny strip and illegally cut off water, food, fuel and electricity to the enclave," Abdollahian concluded.

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.