Amman, March 24 (Petra) -- International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric warned that attacks on essential infrastructure are effectively attacks on civilians, stressing the urgent need to halt such practices and intensify de-escalation efforts.

"War on essential infrastructure is war on civilians. It must stop. Every effort to de-escalate is critical," Spoljaric said in a statement distributed by the ICRC on Tuesday.

She warned that "deliberate attacks on essential services and civilian infrastructure can amount to war crimes," noting that energy, fuel, water, and health-care infrastructure are being damaged and destroyed.

Spoljaric said the trend is not confined to the Middle East or to a specific period, but has become pervasive across conflicts in multiple regions. She warned, however, that recent developments in the Middle East risk pushing the situation to "a point of no return." She added that the most alarming threat is the potential harm to nuclear facilities, whether deliberate or incidental, because damage to such sites could trigger irreversible consequences. She noted that this is why such facilities are afforded heightened protections under the rules of war.

Spoljaric said attacks on essential infrastructure have already inflicted suffering on millions of civilians, both near and far from the front lines, warning that this pattern, coupled with escalatory rhetoric that disregards the limits imposed by international humanitarian law, is normalizing a form of warfare that strips away shared humanity.

She stressed that respecting the dignity of civilians is the basis for de-escalation and for political solutions on which peace and stability can be built.

//Petra// AO