TEHRAN- The Israeli assault on the beleaguered Gaza Strip has drawn criticism from the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, urging the international community to label the occupying Tel Aviv regime as a “terrorist entity” and hold its leaders accountable for “war crimes” against the Palestinian people.

“Following the catastrophic attacks on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, mosques, schools and the Greek Orthodox church in Gaza, the Zionist regime has threatened to pound other hospitals in Gaza!” Nasser Kanaani wrote in a post on X on Saturday.

“Such horrendous crimes mean that the Zionist regime has crossed the limits of insanity,” said Kanaani, adding that they amount to a morally shameful scandal for the governments that have long provided unconditional support to the Zionist regime while preaching to others about human rights.

Kanaani also stated that occupation, aggression, war, misdeeds, assassination, genocide, infanticide, attacks on mosques, churches, hospitals, ambulances and rescue vehicles, schools, houses and residential complexes, refugee camps and journalists, etc. are all crimes collectively manifested in the contemporary world by a bogus and terrorist regime entity called “Israel” with a 75-year-long record of relentless atrocities.

“Nowadays, all these crimes are being committed simultaneously and on a daily basis in Gaza just in front of the international community,” he added. 

Kanaani went on to stress, “All people advocating freedom, justice and fairness across the world demand that the Israeli regime be designated internationally as a terrorist entity, and that Zionist leaders be prosecuted and punished as war criminals.”

On Friday, Kanaani also strongly criticized Israel’s airstrike on a church in the Gaza Strip that was housing displaced Palestinians.

Kanaani said that the attack is another “disgraceful” crime committed by Israeli forces in Gaza, referring to the October 17 Israeli fatal strike on al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital, where the injured people and those fleeing Israeli bombardments had taken refuge.

“It’s another black and disgraceful episode in a series of crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist regime and its criminal political and military leaders,” Kanaani asserted.

Such attacks demonstrate that the Zionist regime doesn’t abide by any humanitarian, moral, and religious values and principles as well as international norms and regulations, the ministry spokesman pointed out.

He also blamed the U.S. and a few European nations, who are strong allies of Tel Aviv, for the atrocities that the Israeli regime is committing.

All religions condemn the “horrific crime,” he added, emphasizing the “international responsibility” to chronicle the atrocities and bring the “Zionist criminals and their known supporters” to account.

Also, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the Foreign Minister of Iran, denounced on Friday the strike as the “latest crime of the occupying apartheid regime.”

“The savage act of the hated regime in aggression, desecration of divine religions, and attacks against historic and cultural heritage is like that of terrorist groups such as Daesh,” he wrote.

After the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, carried out the unexpected Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against Israel on October 7 in reaction to the regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians, Israel declared war on Gaza.

In the time since the Israeli attack began, thousands of Palestinians have lost their lives.

Figures given on Friday showed that 4,385 people have been killed, including 1,756 children and 967 women. Another 13,561 people have been wounded. 70 percent of victims of Israeli attacks are children, women, and the elderly. 

Hamas also announced on Saturday that at least 55 people were killed in overnight raids on the Gaza Strip.

Additionally, Tel Aviv has cut off Gaza’s access to food, water, and power, resulting in a humanitarian crisis throughout the coastal strip.

1.1 million residents of Gaza’s northern region have been given orders by the regime to leave and relocate south of the sliver coastal strip.

However, it hasn’t stopped dropping bombs on the south.

The United Nations said that about half of the Palestinians in Gaza have been made homeless, still trapped inside the besieged strip.

Based on the UN human rights office, Israel’s total blockade of Gaza along with the evacuation order could amount to a forced relocation of residents in violation of international law.

Since October 7, the Israeli regime has dropped nearly 12,000 bombs over the Gazans.

According to Al Jazeera, the Palestinian Authority has called for “real international pressure” on Israel to stop the aggression and for continued entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement quoted by the state-run Wafa news agency that it also viewed the Israeli air raids on the Jenin camp as a dangerous escalation due to the use of planes.

It said the attack was an attempt to carry the model of the bombing of the Gaza Strip into the occupied West Bank.