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Israel undermined regional peace and stability in its attack last week on Hamas leaders who had been in Qatar to negotiate a ceasefire, the United Nations rights chief said during a debate at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday."Israel's strike on negotiators in Doha on 9 September was a shocking breach of international law, an assault on regional peace and stability, and a blow against the integrity of mediation and negotiating processes around the world," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told delegates.The airstrike risked undermining negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza's nearly two-year-old war, he said.The strike, which Hamas says killed five of its members but not its leadership, has prompted Gulf Arab states to close ranks. Arab and Islamic states held a summit in Doha on Monday to back Qatar.Qatar urged council members to hold Israel accountable. The Israeli strike on Doha amounted to "state terrorism" and a direct threat to regional stability, Minister of State for International Cooperation, Mariam bint Ali bin Nasser Al Misnad, told the Tuesday's debate.Saudi Arabia's envoy in Geneva, Abdulmohsen Majed Binkhothaila, said: "Israeli actions are no longer sporadic violations, they constitute a systematic behaviour based on the indiscriminate killings ... and forced displacement in violation of all international norms and laws."Algeria and Pakistan joined Qatar in condemning Israel, while the European Union expressed its solidarity with Qatar.Separately on Tuesday, a UN Commission of Inquiry concluded on Tuesday that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, accusations Israel strongly rejected as it launched a long-threatened ground assault on Gaza City.

The UN rights chief accused Israeli officials on Monday of using overt "genocidal rhetoric" about Gaza and called for decisive international action to "end the carnage".In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council that was criticised by Israel, Volker Turk said the occupied Palestinian territory was already "a graveyard".He accused Israel of inflicting "indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction"."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 did not provide examples, but his spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told AFP that "shocking and dehumanising language" has been used by a number of high-level officials, stressing that "this is not a case of one senior official mouthing off".A number of countries have sanctioned far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has urged "total extermination" in Gaza, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has called for opening the "gates of hell on Gaza (to) encourage Gazans to emigrate".Shamdasani also pointed to Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman's assertion in March that the "only solution for the Gaza Strip is to empty it of Gazans".And Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu said during a radio interview in July that "the government is racing to have Gaza erased".Turk stressed that nearly two years after the war erupted following Hamas's deadly attack on Israel, "the region is crying out for peace".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."Further militarisation, occupation, annexation and oppression will only feed more violence, retribution and terror," Turk warned.He insisted 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 the people of Gaza."Where are the decisive steps to prevent genocide," he asked.