Guterres adds clarity to Tuesday quotes

UN Secretary-General António Guterres rejects accusations by Israel that he justified the Hamas attack on Israel in a statement to the UN Security Council. “I am shocked by the misrepresentation that some have of my statement. As if I were justifying Hamas’s terrorist acts. That is wrong. It was the opposite,” Guterres told a news conference on Wednesday. He added that he had “unequivocally condemned” Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed over 1400 Israelis, the vast majority civilians.      During a meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday, he said, among other things, that “it is important to also recognise that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
     Guterres also stressed in his statement on Tuesday that “the sorrows of the Palestinian people cannot justify Hamas’s appalling attacks”. “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injury and abduction of civilians or launching rockets at civilian targets,” the UN chief said at Wednesday’s short statement. /ritzau/Reuters/