GENEVA, Sept 8, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The United Nations rights chief voiced alarm on Monday at the overt "genocidal rhetoric" by Israeli officials about Gaza and called for decisive international action to "end the carnage".

He said the occupied Palestinian territory was already "a graveyard".

In his opening address to the UN Human Rights Council's 60th session, Volker Turk slammed "Israel's mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza (and) its infliction of indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction".

"Israel's mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza; its infliction of indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction; its hindering of sufficient lifesaving aid and the ensuing starvation of civilians; its killing of journalists, UN staff and NGO workers and its commission of war crime upon war crime, are shocking the conscience of the world," he said.

"I am horrified by the open use of genocidal rhetoric and the disgraceful dehumanisation of Palestinians by senior Israeli officials."

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stressed that nearly two years after the war erupted following Hamas's deadly attack on Israel, "the region is crying out for peace".

"Gaza is a graveyard," he told the rights council.

Israel, like the United States, both disengaged from the council shortly after President Donald Trump's return to the White House.

Turk's comments came after the Israeli army bombed a Gaza City residential tower block on Sunday -- the third in as many days -- and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the military was "deepening" its assault on the Gaza Strip's key urban centre.

The UN estimates nearly one million people remain in and around Gaza City, where it officially declared a famine last month. It has warned of a looming "disaster" if the Israeli assault proceeds.

"Further militarisation, occupation, annexation and oppression will only feed more violence, retribution and terror," Turk warned.

He insisted that Israel had "a legal obligation to take the steps ordered by the International Court of Justice to prevent acts of genocide, punish incitement to genocide and ensure enough aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza".

The UN rights chief said the international community was "failing in its duty".

"We are failing the people of Gaza," he said.

"Where are the decisive steps to prevent genocide?" he asked, demanding that countries do more to "avert atrocity crimes".

"They must stop the flow to Israel of arms that risk violating the laws of war," he said.

"We need action now, to end the carnage."