Over 1600 Palestinians have been thrown to jail in the past month by the Israeli government, according to the Palestinian Ambassador to Nigeria, Abdallah Abu Shawesh.
Speaking in a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday on the war on Gaza by Israel, the envoy called for the release of Palestinian children jailed by Israel.
He said Palestine was ready to release all Israeli hostages if the jailed Palestinians were released as well.
“More than 1600 Palestinians are in Israeli jails from October 2023 to date. Every single day, Palestinians are arrested, tortured and jailed.
“We don’t have the freedom to post on social media,” the Palestinian Ambassador.
Mr Shawesh also called for a ceasefire in Gaza, lamenting that the humanitarian situation in the enclave was becoming disastrous.
“What we need urgently is the ceasefire. The number of Palestinian martyrs as of today exceeded 8700 in Gaza and 114 in the occupied West Bank, 73 per cent of them are children, women and elderly.
“The total number of the injured in Gaza reached more than 20,000, while in the West Bank it has reached 2000. In Gaza, the missing people under the rubble are around 1,500.
“Due to lack of fresh water, hygiene and crowdedness, many infectious diseases started to erupt in the crowded shelter centres, such as smallpox, scabies and diarrhoea,” he said.
He said more than 150,000 housing units have become inhabitable as a result of Israel’s bombardments, adding that 1.4 million civilians were now internally displaced in Gaza.
The Palestinian Ambassador claimed that the main goal of the was “to forcefully transfer the Palestinian people to the Sinai Peninsula” in Egypt.
Israel has heavily bombarded Gaza since Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping at least 240 others, including children, according to Israeli officials. (Daily Trust)
