NEW YORK/GAZA: Kuwait’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah Al-Yahya said Wednesday that Zionist occupation military operations seek to destroy and terrorize Palestinians. Delivering Kuwait’s speech before a UN Security Council session on the situation in the Middle East, Yahya said Gaza has turned into a bleak landscape of destruction, with 40,000 deaths, mostly women and children. The total number of victims under the rubble is unknown, he added.

Leading Kuwait’s delegation to the meeting, Yahya said: “(The Zionist entity) has turned schools into battlefields and hospitals into landscapes of pain and powerlessness”. Despite the efforts to bring an end to these attacks, the Zionist entity continues to cut lives short without any distinction, he noted. He added the Zionist authorities are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Calling for unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance across Gaza, Kuwait’s top diplomat underlined the essential role of UNRWA in supporting the Palestinian people in their darkest hour. Yahya further warned against double standards and expressed support for all initiatives to reach a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian question. He highlighted the Zionist entity’s continued criminal practices and violations of international law, referring to its unilateral decisions aiming to change the current legal and historic status of the occupied territories amid the failure of the UN Security Council to assume its responsibilities.

Yahya renewed Kuwait’s firm solidarity with the brotherly Palestinian people who have been struggling to obtain their legitimate rights, topped with establishing their independent state based on June 4 1967 borders, and achieving a comprehensive and fair peace in line with the relevant international resolutions and references, to reach a fair and lasting solution to the Palestinian cause. This will lead to achieving security, stability and development in the region, Yahya concluded.

Meanwhile, a displaced Palestinian mother has given birth at a hospital run by Kuwait’s Red Crescent Society in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, the first at the medical facility, manager Dr Anwar Al-Ghara said on Thursday. Spread across 750 sq m, the facility is equipped with fully functional maternity wards and has seen an influx of critical patients as of late, he said, adding the hospital has the capacity and critical supplies needed to treat them. He expressed his appreciation of Kuwait’s support, singling out the “exceptional” efforts of Kuwait Red Crescent Society and the charity’s cooperation with its Palestinian counterparts.

The Zionist parliament voted Thursday to oppose a Palestinian state as an “existential threat”, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers the army had Hamas “by the throat”. The vote, which drew swift criticism from the Palestinian leadership and the international community, is largely symbolic but laid down a marker ahead of a planned address by Netanyahu to the US Congress next Wednesday.

The veteran hawk has shown little interest in efforts by the US administration to broker a truce and hostage release deal for Gaza, insisting that “absolute victory” over Hamas is within reach and vowing to ramp up the military pressure. On the ground in Gaza, the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry reported 54 deaths in 24 hours as the Zionist kept up its heavy bombardment of recent days.

The resolution passed by Zionist lawmakers in the early hours said a Palestinian state on land occupied by the Zionist army would “perpetuate the (Zionist)-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region”. It said “promoting” a Palestinian state “would only encourage Hamas and its supporters” after its Oct 7 attack on the Zionist entity. The resolution passed by 68 votes to nine in the 120-member parliament.

The Palestinian Authority accused the Zionist entity’s hard-right ruling coalition of “plunging the region into an abyss”. France expressed “consternation” at the vote, noting that it was “in contradiction” with multiple UN Security resolutions.

All health facilities in southern Gaza have been pushed to “breaking point” by the influx of casualties from Zionist bombardments, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday. AFPTV images showed mourners at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir el-Balah, where several white-shrouded corpses lay on the ground. One man cradled the covered body of a child.

Rescuers confirmed several people had been killed in separate Zionist strikes. At the hospital, Ahmed Abu Muheisen said one strike had targeted his cousin’s family in the Al-Zuwaida area. “His children and his wife were martyred and so was he,” Muheisen said. The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 38,848 people, mostly women and children, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry.

In an address to the European Parliament on Thursday, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen underlined international concern over the civilian death toll in Gaza. “The people of Gaza cannot bear any more, and humanity cannot bear any more,” she said. The war has destroyed much of Gaza’s housing and other infrastructure, leaving almost all of the population displaced and short of food and drinking water. – Agencies