TEHRAN- On the occasion of World Children’s Day, Iran’s top human rights official has attacked governments and international organizations for failing to protect children in Gaza, where the Israeli regime has killed thousands of children in the last 45 days as part of an ongoing war against the enclave.

“If they consider the children in Gaza to be part of the world’s children, it would be good for them to recognize the right of these oppressed children to a childhood, to continue to live and to grow,” wrote Kazem Gharibabadi in a post in Farsi on the X platform on Monday.

Gharibabadi serves as the secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, a subsidiary of the Iranian judiciary.

During the Gaza conflict, the body has been active in a campaign to expose human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli regime.

His comments came as the number of children killed since the start of the Israeli aggression on Gaza on October 7 exceeded 5,500 on Monday, according to official figures. That means that one out of every 200 children in Gaza has been killed in Israeli attacks over the past six weeks.

During a weekly news conference on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said that the international community’s growing dissatisfaction with the conflict and desire for its end is seen by the mounting resistance to Israeli crimes in Gaza and the U.S. government’s support of the regime’s wrongdoings.

He also said that the U.S. and Israel have been forewarned by the resistance groups in the region that they would not stand idly by while the Israeli regime carrying out its atrocities on the Palestinian people in the beleaguered Gaza Strip.

“The actions of the Zionist regime spark a reaction by the resistance groups in the region. They (the groups) had repeatedly warned the U.S. and the Zionists that if these attacks continue, they will not remain silent,” he said.

“The U.S. and the Zionist regime must understand that they can escape the situation only by stopping the war completely and immediately, allowing the dispatch of humanitarian aid [to the coastal enclave], and ending the forced displacement of the people of Gaza.”

Additionally, the Iranian diplomat asked the U.S. administration to cease supporting Israeli atrocities in Gaza and focus on international security and peace rather than putting pressure on others to take action.

He pointed out that U.S. Congressmen have shown in recent years that they are willing to sacrifice the interests of the American people in favor of the Zionist regime.

With a population of over 2.3 million, estimates indicate that about half of Gaza residents are under the age of eighteen.

The situation of children in Gaza has piqued the interest of human rights campaigners and anti-war activists throughout the world, with rallies taking place nearly on a daily basis in Western capitals to pressure the Israeli regime to end its killing of women and children in the blockaded region.