ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT: Pope Francis has decried the deaths of Palestinian children in Israeli military attacks in the Gaza Strip, calling bombings of schools, on the “assumption” of striking Hamas, “horrible”.
On the flight back to Rome from Singapore, he expressed doubt that either Hamas or Israel, now at war for eleven months, were seeking to end the ongoing war. “I am sorry to have to say this,” the pope added. “But I do not think that they are taking measures on order to make peace.”
Francis, he speaks on the telephone with members of a Catholic parish in the Gaza Strip “every day” and “they tell me horrible things, tough things”.
“Please, when you see the bodies of killed kids, when you see that, under the assumption that some guerrillas are there, a school is ruined and attacked, this is ugly,” he said. “It is ugly.”
The pope, who has supported calls for a truce in the war, stated “sometimes I think it’s a conflict that is too much, too much”.
The brutal Israeli military offensive has reduced the Gaza Strip to rubble and killed over 41,000 Palestinians, Gaza’s health ministry said.
