United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s recent remarks about civilian deaths in Gaza have sparked a furious fact-checking response from social media users. During a press conference on Monday, Guterres stated, “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary-General.” The comment was posted on the official U.N. News account on the social media platform X, eliciting a “community note” on the platform, which allows users to provide context to potentially misleading posts. The community note highlighted conflicts with higher death tolls than Gaza, specifically referencing the Syrian civil war and the Yemen War. Both conflicts have seen civilian death tolls in the hundreds of thousands, far surpassing the figures in Gaza. Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gilad Erdan ripped into Guterres, writing, “Short memory? I think not. More likely that it’s the regular bias and anti-Israel approach of the secretary-general.” Guterres, in his comments, had avoided discussing the accuracy of numbers provided by Hamas in Gaza. Since he took over as UN secretary general, the Syrian civil war saw over 10,000 civilian deaths in 2017 alone. The Yemen War, predating his term, has resulted in over 377,000 deaths, with a U.N. report stating that one child died every seven minutes in Yemen in 2022, including non-combat-related deaths. The Gaza Health Ministry, controlled by Hamas, reported over 11,000 deaths in Gaza since Israel’s response to the October 7 terrorist attack that killed 1,200. However, these figures do not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths – and they’re almost certainly inflated. “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary General”- UN chief @antonioguterres pic.twitter.com/cj3EZgbSoE — UN News (@UN_News_Centre) November 20, 2023 (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)