Kazakh president says conflict in Gaza divided world into two camps

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Thursday that the conflict in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has killed over 14,800 people since the Oct. 7 Hamas offensive, has divided the world into at least two camps.

Speaking at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in the Belarusian capital Minsk, Tokayev warned that measures should be taken or "the fire of war may scorch all countries and continents."

"From the very beginning, we insisted that the conflicting parties make every effort to declare a humanitarian pause and use it to develop long-term settlement," he said.

As a result of the conflict in Gaza, civilians are suffering, innocent people, including children, have died in large numbers, Tokayev said, adding that "it is impossible to put up with this."

While Arab and Muslim countries and others called for a cease-fire in Gaza, most of the Western nations maintained that Israel has a right to defend itself and only called for humanitarian pauses, an agreement regarding which has been struck whose implementation will start on Friday.

According to the Kazakh leader, the situation on the Eurasian continent and along the perimeter of the CSTO area of responsibility is also tense.

The rhetoric of the organization should be "tough, but extremely correct, taking into account the dignity of the participating states and their combined military-political potential and power," he said.

"The CSTO has shown its successes as an authoritative military-political organization, but there are new tasks ahead that should correspond to the constructive attitude of its participating states."

The CSTO is a Russia-led bloc and includes post-Soviet states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Belarus.