“Boys, girls… at the beginning of the school day being murdered like this, backpacks with blood stains, this is absolutely horrible.” he said. “If there is any image that captures the essence of the destruction, desperation, senselessness and cruelty of this conflict, those are the images.”
Ms Shamdasani said UN human rights chief Volker Türk was “deeply shocked” by the impacts of hostilities on civilians and civilian infrastructure, and called for a “prompt, impartial and thorough investigation” into the circumstances of the attack on Minab.
“He The responsibility for investigating it falls to the forces that carried out the attack.. We ask you to make the findings public and guarantee accountability and reparation for the victims,” he insisted.
Ms. Shamdasani also highlighted that if the attacks are found to be directed against civilians or civilian objects or are indiscriminate attacks, these are “serious violations of international humanitarian law and may constitute war crimes.”
Blackout in Tehran
OHCHR spokesperson expressed concern for the well-being of Iranians “given the Government’s history of cracking down with lethal force a) on a large scale against those who oppose its government and new threats from senior officials against any expression of dissent at this time.”
He called on authorities to safeguard the fundamental freedoms of Iranians and deplored people’s limited access to essential information amid the countrywide internet shutdown.
Since the conflict erupted on Saturday with Israeli and US attacks on Iran, Tehran has responded with counterattacks against Israel and other US allies across the region. Ms. Shamdasani underlined the fact that, in addition to Iran and Israel, hostilities have so far affected 12 other countries, destroying homes, businesses, airports and energy infrastructure.
uprooted lebanese
In Lebanon, where armed Hezbollah militants entered the conflict, provoking Israeli attacks, “Heavy displacement has been reported in parts of southern Lebanon, the Bekaa and the southern suburbs of Beirut.”said UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Babar Baloch.
Israel issued evacuation warnings to residents of more than 53 Lebanese villages and carried out intense airstrikes in all three parts of Lebanon, it said.
As of Monday, “conservative estimates suggest that nearly 30,000 people were housed and registered in congregate shelters,” Baloch said. “Many more were sleeping in their cars on the side of the roads or still stuck in traffic jams.leaving the south to (reach) Beirut.”
According to press reports on Tuesday, Israel floor The troops entered southern Lebanon, following Hezbollah attacks against northern Israel.
The UNHCR spokesperson stressed that many of the countries affected by the new conflict “already host millions of refugees and internally displaced persons.”
He warned that further violence and displacement risk overwhelming the capacities of host communities.
Supply chain fears
Severe disruptions to freight transportation due to escalating hostilities in the region are also affecting humanitarian supply routes and those who depend on them for their next meal.
Speaking from Cairo, Samer Abdel Jaber, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), highlighted disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea that “will cause complicate shipping routes and delays and driving costs for most of our operations that depend on those routes”.
“With the seas in dispute and the closure of airspace, we are looking to adapt and (use) our supplier networks in other countries like Türkiye, like Egypt, like Jordan and Pakistan to support land corridors,” he said.
The WFP official added that ports in Egypt and the Suez Canal, “a key hub to support our operation in Gaza, but also in Sudan,” are still operating.
He said Israel’s decision to close border crossings with Gaza since the beginning of the conflict had been a cause for concern, but that “good news” came on Tuesday of an imminent opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing.
According to subsequent media reports, the crossing, on the southern border of the Gaza Strip, was reopened on Tuesday.
“That’s timely for us and we need to get help as quickly as possible,” Jaber said. “We have wheat flour that is enough for only 10 days and food packages that will sustain our programs for only two and a half weeks… We need to ensure that there is a continuous and scalable flow of food to the Gaza Strip,” he concluded.