Guardiola delivers emotional speech for Palestinian children at Barcelona charity event

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has made an impassioned appeal mentioning the suffering of Palestinian children, urging the global community to take responsibility and act.

According to a report by Sky News, Guardiola skipped his routine pre-match press conference on Friday after addressing a charity concert in Barcelona the previous evening, where he spoke at length about the human cost of the war in Gaza.

Wearing a keffiyeh scarf, the City boss opened his remarks with a greeting to the audience.

"Good evening, salam alaikum, how wonderful," the 55-year-old said, before describing the distress he feels when seeing images of children affected by the conflict.

"When I see a child in these past two years with these images on social media, on television, recording himself, pleading, 'where is my mother?' among the rubble, and he still doesn't know it.

"And I always think: 'What must they be thinking?' And I think we have left them alone, abandoned.

"I always imagine them saying: 'Where are you? Come help us.'

"And even now, we haven't done it. Perhaps because those in power are cowards, because they basically send innocent young people to kill innocent people."

Guardiola described his remarks as both "a statement for Palestine" and "a statement for humanity", calling for what he termed a collective "step forward".

Manchester City earlier confirmed that Guardiola's absence from Friday's media briefing was due to personal reasons, with assistant coach Pep Lijnders stepping in to preview Sunday's Premier League clash against Tottenham Hotspur.

Despite a fragile ceasefire agreed between Hamas and Israel in October, Gaza's health ministry reports that more than 400 Palestinians have been killed in the months since. Israeli media, citing senior military officials, have also reported that Israel's military now accepts that around 70,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war in Gaza.