Friday August 29, 2025
Mogadishu (HOL) — Somalia’s ambassador to the United Nations accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, telling the Security Council that the deliberate starvation of civilians and attacks on hospitals and essential infrastructure violate international law.
Abukar Osman Baale, Somalia’s UN envoy,
said Israel’s decision to impose “total military control” over Gaza, expand settlements in East Jerusalem, and continue its bombing campaign has created a humanitarian catastrophe. He cited the strike on the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, which killed patients, doctors and journalists, as an example of systematic targeting of civilians.
“Famine is no longer looming. It is man-made, and it is happening in Gaza,” Baale said. “The starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is genocide and is prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
The address came as Gaza’s death toll climbed past 63,000, with hospitals reporting dozens more killed since dawn in airstrikes, including in al-Mawasi, an area Israel itself had marked as a “humanitarian zone.” Hunger has already claimed the lives of 322 people, 121 of them children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, with five more dying from famine in just the past 24 hours.
The Somali ambassador outlined four urgent measures: the full and immediate lifting of Israel’s blockade, unrestricted humanitarian access, protection of civilian infrastructure, and an unconditional cease-fire alongside the release of hostages and detainees.
Baale described scenes of children dying from hunger, mothers unable to breastfeed newborns due to malnutrition, and hospitals turned into morgues after fuel supplies ran out. “What we are witnessing is not security,” he said. “It is collective punishment, and it is genocide.”
Somalia restated its backing for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, a demand echoed in countless UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative. Ambassador Abukar Osman Baale said Mogadishu would continue to stand “firmly” with Palestinians in what he described as their long struggle for freedom, dignity, and self-determination.