A UN rapporteur known for her anti-Israel comments on Monday said there were "reasonable grounds" to determine that Israel has committed several acts of "genocide" in its war in Gaza, AFP reported.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, claimed there were clear indications that Israel had violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.
"The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group," she said in a report, as quoted by AFP.
Albanese, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations, said she had found "reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of... acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met".
Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva said the country "utterly rejects the report", describing it as "simply an extension of a campaign seeking to undermine the very establishment of the Jewish State".
"Israel's war is against Hamas, not against Palestinian civilians," it said in a statement, slamming Albanese's "outrageous accusations".
A US official told AFP that Washington is "aware" of Albanese's report but has "no reason to believe Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza."
Albanese has become notorious for her anti-Israel bias. In 2022, antisemitic posts she made on social media, in which she claimed that the “Jewish lobby” controls the US, were exposed.
At the time, Albanese rejected arguments that the comments about the “Jewish lobby” were antisemitic and claimed they were “mischaracterized”.
In July of last year, Albanese accused Israel of transforming Palestinian Arab territories into an "open-air prison" through widespread detentions of Palestinian Arabs.
Since the Hamas massacre on October 7, she has condemned Israel for defending itself and gone as far as to claim that Israel has no right to defend itself.
More recently, Albanese denied that the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on October 7 was antisemitic.