UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza ahead of the third anniversary of October 7.
Urging the international community to forge a political path to lasting peace in the whole region, Guterres, in an official statement, said, “It is time for the ceasefire to become permanent. It is time to allow humanitarian assistance at scale. And it is time to respect international law.”
Reasserting that the anniversary must present more than mourning, he added, “Let this anniversary mark not only another year of mourning, but also a renewed determination to build a different future: one in which Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace and security, with their rights, dignity, and aspirations fulfilled.”
Highlighting that the Palestinians have endured ‘massive loss of life, displacement and destruction’, he called for an end to their suffering.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 74,000 people, as per the Palestinian Health Ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures are deemed reliable by the UN.
He also acknowledged the brief ceasefire mediated by U.S. President Donald Trump in October 2025. He said the ceasefire “brought some relief. But it has yet to deliver security, adequate humanitarian assistance or a credible path to recovery and peace.”
Israel, which controls most of Gaza, refuses to withdraw its soldiers until Hamas’s disarmament has been verified. Hamas, on the contrary, has advocated for gradual disarmament rather than immediate and unilateral surrender of its arsenal.
At the war front, Israel has ordered its military to hunt down and kill the remaining participants in the Hamas-led Oct 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday.
As per official records about 6,000 attackers crossed the border into Israel on that day. Mentioning that that 4,000 of them had already been killed , Katz claimed that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the military to pursue the rest. “We ordered the military to pursue and kill them all, from the most senior to the most junior,” Katz said.