The people of the Middle East are facing a real danger of a devastating full-scale conflict, António Guterres said on Sunday, urging “maximum restraint” across a region on the brink hours after Iran launched attack drones and missiles against Israel overnight Saturday. “It is vital to avoid any action that could lead to major military confrontations on multiple fronts in the Middle East...Now is the time for maximum restraint,” the UN Secretary-General told delegates at the opening of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. 

“The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda 30 years ago is a stain on our collective consciousness and a brutal reminder of the legacy of colonialism, and the consequences of hate speech,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his opening remarks. More than a million people - overwhelmingly Tutsi, but also Hutu and others who opposed the genocide - were slaughtered over 100 days, starting on 7 April 1994. Many were hacked to death with machetes. It was a period when “neighbours turned on neighbours, friends became murderous foes, and entire families were wiped out,” Mr. Guterres recalled.
 

Israel must make meaningful changes in the way it is fighting in Gaza to avoid civilian casualties while also undergoing “a true paradigm shift” in lifesaving aid delivery, the UN chief said. Marking six months of war since the “abhorrent” Hamas-led terror attacks of 7 October, António Guterres told journalists at UN Headquarters in New York that nothing could justify the horror unleashed by Palestinian militants that day. “I once again utterly condemn the use of sexual violence, torture injuring and kidnapping of civilians, the firing of rockets towards civilian targets and the use of human shields”, he said.

Secretary-General António Guterres told journalists at the Rafah border crossing into Gaza that it is time for a ceasefire and for an "ironclad commitment by Israel" to allow unhindered aid deliveries into the besieged enclave as he began his annual Ramadan solidarity trip on Saturday with planned visits to Egypt and Jordan. In a tradition that started when he served as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to shine a light on Muslim communities in distress, Mr. Guterres arrived in Cairo on Saturday, where he reiterated his urgent calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and the cessation of violence, notably in Gaza and Sudan. 

With “starvation bearing down” on Gaza, UN Secretary-General António Guterres repeated his call for a sustainable end to the conflict and the release of all remaining hostages amid “unprecedented and ongoing devastation” in the occupied enclave. “The need is urgent,” Mr. Guterres said in Amman, alongside Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safady, as he pledged to keep pushing “for the removal of all obstacles to life-saving aid, for more access and more entry points” into Gaza.