Ayatollah Sistani urges joint Muslim action to stop Israeli massacres in Gaza

Iraq’s prominent Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has called upon Muslim nations to join forces and stand up against Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and provide further support to the residents of the besieged Palestinian coastal sliver.

In a message issued on Saturday, the top Iraqi cleric demanded global denunciation of the Zionist regime’s “barbaric behavior” and asked for prevention of further harm to Palestinians.

He appealed specifically to the Muslim world to unite their efforts to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and offer much greater support to the Palestinian population of the territory.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also strongly condemned the Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City that killed more than 100 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others early on Saturday.

He described the attack on the al-Tabin school in Gaza City’s al-Daraj neighborhood as a “wholesale massacre.”

Over 100 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes on school in Gaza

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed following Israeli airstrikes on a school sheltering displaced people in the east of the Gaza Strip as the occupying regime presses ahead with a months-long aggression on the besieged territory.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani roundly chastised Israeli atrocities, which have dramatically increased over the past ten months, emphasizing that the regime’s assassination of regional resistance leader, including the political bureau chief of the Hamas resistance movement Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, increase the risk of a full-blown conflict in the West Asia region.

The top Iraqi Shia cleric argued that words cannot describe the heinous crimes, which are being committed by the brutes with no respect whatsoever for humanitarian values.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani also lamented the lack of international legal accountability for such crimes, blaming certain world powers for such a failure.

Local media reports, citing witness accounts, said there were about 250 people inside the prayer hall at Gaza City's al-Tabin school when it was struck by Israeli bombs while displaced people were performing the dawn prayer.

Witness accounts suggest many of the dead and injured are civilians, including women, children and the elderly.

Axis of Resistance: US complicit in Israeli massacre at Gaza school

Resistance groups in the region have strongly condemned the Israeli bombing of a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip, that killed more than 100 Palestinians early Saturday.

Ismail al-Thawabta, head of Gaza’s Government Media Office, said the Israeli military used three bombs weighing 2,000 pounds (907kg) each in its attack on the al-Tabin school in Gaza City’s al-Daraj neighborhood.

Thawabta added that Israel was aware of the presence of displaced people inside the school.

A leading humanitarian organization for children has called the Israeli strike on al-Tabin school in Gaza City the “deadliest attack on a school since last October”.

“It is devastating to see the toll this has taken, including so many children and people at the school for dawn prayers,” Tamer Kirolos, a regional director for Save the Children, said.

He added, “Children make up around 40 percent of the population and of people killed and injured since October” in the Strip.

“Civilians, children, must be protected. An immediate definitive ceasefire is the only foreseeable way that will happen,” Kirolos noted.

At least 39,790 people have been killed and 91,702 wounded as a result of Israeli military attacks on Gaza since October 7, the region’s Health Ministry announced in a statement.

Of those, 40 Palestinians were killed and 140 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry added.

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