Brazil calls UN Security Council meeting on Israel-Hamas war

NEW YORK (AFP): Brazil, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, called a Friday meeting of the body to discuss the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, its foreign affairs ministry said Wednesday.

Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister Mauro Vieira has interrupted an Asia trip to travel “to New York to participate in a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, called by Brazil… to address the situation in the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said in a statement.

Brazil previously called an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Sunday, the day after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel.

Israeli forces say 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the onslaught — the worst in the country’s history.

As Israel pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip — a densely populated enclave of 2.3 million people — in response, the death toll there has also reached 1,200 people, including a high number of civilians, according to Palestinian authorities.

More than 338,000 people in the enclave have been displaced, according to the United Nations.

At Sunday’s Security Council meeting, members were divided over policy concerning Israel and the Palestinians.

Earlier on Wednesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for urgent international action to protect both Palestinian and Israeli civilians, especially children.

“Children must never be held hostage, anywhere in the world,” Lula wrote on social media platform X.

“Hamas needs to free the Israeli children who were kidnapped from their families. Israel needs to stop its bombing so Palestinian children and their mothers can leave the Gaza Strip via the Egyptian border,” he said.

“There needs to be a minimum of humanity in the insanity of war.”