Spain's social rights minister Ione Belarra accuses Israel of committing 'live genocide' in Gaza

Spanish social rights minister Ione Belarra has accused Israel of carrying out a "live genocide" in Gaza and proposed a legal initiative to bring Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to the ICC for war crimes.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Belarra said she "didn't want to be an accomplice" to Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on the besieged Palestinian enclave, which have so far killed over 11,400 people, most of them women and children.

Belarra, who also leads the left-wing Podemos party, also called on Netanyahu "and his political leadership" to be brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying that over 80 MPs in Europe and Latin America were joining her in efforts to do this. Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the UK Labour Party, is one of those signatories.

Belarra's video comes after she last month accused Israel of carrying out a "planned genocide" against Gaza after it began indiscriminate strikes on the besieged territory following Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on 7 October, which killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis.