World Must Choose Between Gaza and 'Child Torturers' - Iran's Parliament Speaker

COLOMBO (News 1st); Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has said the world must choose between standing with the besieged Gaza Strip or siding with what he described as child torturers, stressing that there is no middle ground, Iran’s Press TV reported.

Qalibaf made the remarks on Monday following footage aired by official Palestine TV a day earlier, which allegedly showed Israeli soldiers torturing a one-year-old child in central Gaza to pressure the child’s father during an interrogation, according to Press TV.

“Iran is fighting for humanity. The world is either with Gaza and against this colonial terror regime, or it stands with the Epstein class and child torturers. There is no middle ground,” Qalibaf said in a post on X, as quoted by the broadcaster.

The footage reportedly showed injuries to an 18-month-old child identified as Karim. His father, Osama Abu Nassar, was stopped for interrogation at a military checkpoint near the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

During the interrogation, Israeli soldiers allegedly burned one of the toddler’s legs with cigarettes and inserted a nail into the child’s leg in front of his father, according to a medical report cited by Palestinian journalist Osama al-Kahlout and carried by Press TV.

Turkey’s TRT World reported that Osama was taking his child to buy supplies when he became caught in gunfire near his home. He was allegedly forced by Israeli soldiers to leave his 18-month-old son on the ground and approach a nearby military checkpoint, where he was stripped and interrogated.

According to the report, the International Committee of the Red Cross in al-Maghazi later managed to hand the child over to his family after he had been held in police custody for 10 hours. The report added that the child’s father remains in Israeli detention.

Press TV further reported that since a US-brokered ceasefire between the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement and Israel in October last year, at least 677 Palestinians have been killed and 1,813 others injured in Israeli attacks across the Palestinian territories, citing the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Israel’s war on Gaza, launched in October 2023, has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and injured over 171,000 others, while causing widespread destruction to about 90 percent of civilian infrastructure in the territory, according to figures cited by Press TV.