Pope Francis has again condemned the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip, saying on Saturday that this is not war, but "cruelty".
A day earlier, an Israeli government minister condemned the pope for suggesting that the international community should investigate whether the Israeli army's war constitutes genocide against the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his pre-Christmas address to Christian cardinals by referring to Israel's airstrikes on Friday in Gaza that left at least 25 Palestinians dead.
"Yesterday, the children were bombed. This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches your heart", said Frančesku.
The pope, as leader of the 1.4 billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful not to take sides in conflicts, but recently, he has been more vocal about Israel's military campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Hamas is declared a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
In parts of the book published last month, the pope said that some international experts have said that "what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide".
Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli, strongly criticized these statements in an open letter published by the Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope's comments amounted to a "trivialization" of the term genocide.
The pope also said Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as the patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there but had been denied entry.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping nearly 250 others.
Since then, Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza has left more than 45,000 Palestinians dead, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Israel says at least a third of those killed have been militants and says it tries to avoid harming civilians. REL (A2 Televizion)
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