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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis for the first time tackled Israel's ongoing "genocide" of Palestinians in Gaza in a forthcoming book, urging further investigation into whether Israel's actions meet the definition.

Titled "Hope Never Disappoints. Pilgrims Towards a Better World", the book includes his latest and most forthright intervention into the more than year-long war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.

"According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide," the pontiff wrote in extracts published on Sunday in Italy's La Stampa daily. 

"This should be studied carefully to determine whether [the situation] corresponds to the technical definition formulated by jurists and international organisations," he added. 

The Argentine pontiff has frequently deplored the number of victims of Israel's operations in Gaza, with the territory's health ministry putting the toll at least 43,846 people, most of them civilians.

But his call for a probe marks the first time he has publicly used the term genocide -- without endorsing it -- in the context of Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territory.

On Thursday, a United Nations Special Committee judged Israel's conduct of warfare in Gaza "consistent with the characteristics of genocide", accusing the country of "using starvation as a method of war".

Its conclusions have already been condemned by Israel's key backer the United States.

It is, however, not the first time that Israel has been the subject of genocide accusations since the start of the war.

South Africa has brought a genocide case before the International Court of Justice with the support of several countries, including Turkey, Spain and Mexico.

Francis has also frequently called for the return of the Israeli hostages taken on October 7.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Two senior Islamic Jihad figures were killed in an Israeli strike on Syria on Thursday, said a source from the Palestinian group which has fought against Israel in Gaza alongside Hamas.

The source told AFP on Saturday that Abdel Aziz Minawi, a member of Islamic Jihad's political bureau, and the group's foreign relations chief Rasmi Abu Issa were killed in the strike on Qudsaya, in the Damascus area.

The same source said the strike, targeting a building housing one of the group's offices in Syria, also killed another Islamic Jihad member.

Israeli authorities, who rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, claimed responsibility for the one on Thursday, saying they targeted Islamic Jihad.

Contacted by AFP on Saturday, Israel's army however declined to comment on the two leaders' deaths.

Israeli strikes on Thursday in and around Damascus killed 23 people, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.

Thirteen people, including civilians and Iran-backed fighters, were killed in a strike on the upscale Damascus district of Mazzeh, the Observatory said, adding that an attack on the capital's outskirts killed 10 Islamic Jihad militants.

Syrian state media said Israel struck the Mazzeh district again on Friday.

Attacks blamed on or claimed by Israel have intensified in Syria, including in areas near the Lebanese border, mainly targeting bastions of the Lebanese movement Hizbollah.

Islamic Jihad still holds several Israeli hostages taken during the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. Earlier this week, the group released two video clips of Sasha Trupanov, a 29-year-old Russian-Israeli hostage.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israel launched a wave of air strikes on Hizbollah bastions in Beirut and south Lebanon on Saturday, a day after Lebanese officials said they were studying a US truce proposal.

Since September 23, Israel has escalated its bombing of targets in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops after almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hizbollah militants over the Gaza war.

AFPTV footage showed fresh strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Saturday, following calls from the Israeli army for residents to evacuate.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported four strikes during the day and further "heavy strikes" in the early evening.

The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted "a weapons storage facility" and a Hizbollah "command centre" in south Beirut.

NNA also reported a strike on the southern city of Tyre, in a neighbourhood near UNESCO-listed ancient ruins.

In eastern Lebanon, funerals were held for 14 civil defence staff killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday.

"They weren't involved with any [armed] party... they were just waiting to answer calls for help," said Ali Al Zein, a relative of one of the dead.

Hizbollah claimed several rocket attacks on northern Israel, targeting military sites including a naval base in the Haifa area.

The Israeli military said "approximately 65 projectiles" had crossed the border.

Lebanese authorities say more than 3,452 people have been killed since October last year, when Hizbollah and Israel began trading fire.

 'Massive explosion' 

In Gaza, the Israeli military said its forces continued "operational activity" in the northern areas of Jabalia and Beit Lahia, the targets of an intense offensive since early October.

A UN-backed assessment at the weekend warned famine was imminent in northern Gaza, and UN figures showed the Israeli operation had forced at least 100,000 people to flee.

Israel has pushed back against a Human Rights Watch report this week that said its displacement of Gazans amounts to a "crime against humanity", as well as findings from a UN Special Committee that pointed to warfare practices that "are consistent with the characteristics of genocide".

A foreign ministry spokesman dismissed the HRW report as "completely false", while the United States -- Israel's main military backer -- said accusations of genocide "are certainly unfounded".

The Gaza health ministry said at least 35 people were killed in the territory in the previous 24 hours, taking the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war to 43,799.

The majority of the dead were civilians, according to ministry figures which the United Nations considers reliable.

Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The civil defence agency reported 23 people killed in strikes across Gaza on Saturday.

In Rafah, Jamil Al Masry said a house was hit, causing "a massive explosion".

"We went to the house, only to find it in ruins, with fire raging and smoke and dust everywhere," he told AFP.

As diplomacy aimed at ending the Gaza war has stalled, a top government official in Beirut said on Friday that US ambassador Lisa Johnson had presented a 13-point proposal to halt the Israel-Hizbollah conflict.

It includes a 60-day truce, during which Lebanon will deploy troops to the border. The official added that Israel has yet to respond to the plan.

A second Lebanese official, similarly requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said he was "optimistic" about the talks.

Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met Lebanese officials in Beirut on Friday, saying Tehran was "looking for solutions".

Tehran — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the visiting head of the UN nuclear watchdog on Thursday that his government was willing to resolve doubts about its atomic programme, ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump's arrival in office.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said achieving "results" in nuclear talks with Iran was vital to avoid a new conflict in the region already inflamed by Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon.

His visit comes just days after Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said Iran was "more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities" giving Israel "the opportunity to achieve our most important goal".

"As we have repeatedly proven our goodwill, we announce our readiness to cooperate and converge with this international organisation to resolve the alleged ambiguities and doubts about the peaceful nuclear activity of our country," Pezeshkian told Grossi.

Trump, a hawk on Iran, is expected to give Israel a far freer rein after he takes office in January.

In Tehran, Grossi said Iranian nuclear installations "should not be attacked".

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who also met with Grossi, said Iran was "willing to negotiate" based on the "national interest" and "inalienable rights," but was not "ready to negotiate under pressure and intimidation".

Araghchi was Iran's chief negotiator in talks that led to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, abandoned three years later by Trump.

'Immediate countermeasures' 

Grossi also met the head of Iran's atomic energy organisation, Mohammad Eslami.

Eslami told a joint news conference that Iran would take "immediate countermeasures" against any sanctions from the IAEA's board of governors.

"Any interventionist resolution in the nuclear affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely be met with immediate countermeasures," Eslami said.

Grossi's visit is his second to Tehran this year but his first since Trump's re-election.

During his first term in the White House from 2017 to 2021, Trump adopted a policy called "maximum pressure" which reimposed sweeping US economic sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 deal.

Search for solutions 

In response, Iran started to gradually roll back its commitments under the deal, which barred it from enriching uranium to above 3.65 per cent.

The IAEA says Iran has significantly expanded its stocks of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, a level that has triggered international alarm as it is much closer to the 90 per cent level needed for a nuclear warhead.

Iran has blamed the incoming US president for the standoff.

"The one who left the agreement was not Iran, it was America," government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Wednesday.

"Mr Trump once tried the path of maximum pressure and saw that this path did not work."

Trump's looming return to the White House in January has only added to international fears of all-out conflict between Israel and Iran after the archfoes exchanged unprecedented direct attacks earlier this year.

"The margins for manoeuvre are beginning to shrink," Grossi warned in an interview with AFP on Tuesday, adding that "it is imperative to find ways to reach diplomatic solutions".

Religious decree 

Grossi has said that while Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon, it does have plenty of enriched uranium that could eventually be used to make one.

Pezeshkian won election in July on a platform to improve ties with the West and revive the 2015 deal.

But all efforts to get the nuclear agreement off life support have failed.

In recent years, Tehran has switched off surveillance devices used to monitor its nuclear programme and effectively barred IAEA inspectors.

Grossi said he would visit uranium enrichment plants at Fordo and Natanz on Friday to get a "full picture" of Iran's nuclear programme.

The foundations of the programme date back to the late 1950s, when the United States signed a civil cooperation agreement with the Western-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In 1970, Iran ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which requires signatory states to declare and place their nuclear materials under IAEA control.

But with Iran threatening to hit back at Israel for its latest missile strikes, some lawmakers have called on the government to revise its nuclear doctrine to develop an atomic bomb.

They called on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, to reconsider his longstanding religious edict or fatwa banning nuclear weapons.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A war monitor said Israeli strikes in and around Damascus on Thursday killed 20 people including Palestinian militants and Iran-backed fighters, as attacks intensify during the Lebanon war.

Israel has ramped up strikes on Syria recently, including in areas near the Lebanese border mainly targeting bastions of Iran-backed Hizbollah. Israel has been at war with the Lebanese group since September.

"The death toll from the Israeli strikes on the Mazzeh neighbourhood and Qudsaya rose to 20 people, in addition to 21 other wounded," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Mazzeh neighbourhood, home to embassies, United Nations offices and security headquarters, has been the target of previous strikes blamed on Israel.

Qudsaya is located on the outskirts of Damascus.

"Israeli strikes destroyed three multi-storey buildings in the Mazzeh neighbourhood, killing 10 people," said the Observatory with a network of sources inside Syria. It added that the dead included at least three civilians and two non-Syrian Iran-backed fighters.

In Qudsaya, Israeli jets targeted "an apartment complex housing Palestinians, killing 10 people, including at least three members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement", the monitor said.

Islamic Jihad has fought alongside Hamas against Israel in Gaza.

Earlier, Syria's defence ministry said the twin Israeli air strikes killed 15 people after "targeting residential buildings in the Mazzeh neighbourhood of Damascus and the Qudsaya area in the Damascus countryside".

The official SANA news agency published video footage of smoke covering a street.

Early last month Syria's government said seven civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike, in the Mazzeh district, which the observatory said targeted a building used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Hizbollah.

In April, Syrian and Iranian officials blamed Israeli air strikes for the destruction of Iran's embassy consular annex in Mazzeh. The strike killed seven members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

That attack led to Iran's first ever direct strike against Israeli soil, a barrage of drones and missiles, which in turn led to an apparent Israeli retaliation, raising fears of regional conflagration.

Iran and Lebanon's Hizbollah have been among the Syrian government's most important allies in the country's civil war that began in 2011.

TEHRAN — International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi is set to visit Tehran on Wednesday for crucial talks on Iran's nuclear programme, warning just ahead of his trip that room for manoeuvre is narrowing.

His visit comes only two days after the defence minister of Iran's nemesis Israel warned the Islamic republic was "more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities".

Israel has long accused Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, a claim Tehran denies.

The two countries have traded missile strikes this year, as tensions soar over Israel's war on Iran's allies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The strikes have brought to the surface their years-long shadow war and fuelled fears of a wider Middle East conflict.

"The margins for manoeuvre are beginning to shrink," Grossi said in an interview with AFP ahead of his visit, adding that "it is imperative to find ways to reach diplomatic solutions".

While the IAEA is allowed to carry out inspections in Iran, Grossi stressed the need for "more visibility" into Iran's nuclear programme, given its scale and ambition.

Grossi's trip comes after Donald Trump -- who pulled out of a hard-won nuclear deal with Iran negotiated under Barack Obama -- was voted back into the White House.

Trump said last week that he was not seeking to harm Iran and instead wanted its people to have "a very successful country", while insisting "they can't have a nuclear weapon".

In 2015, major world powers including the United States reached an agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme after 21 months of talks.

The text provided for an easing of international sanctions on Iran in exchange for guarantees that it would not seek nuclear weapons.

But Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018 before re-imposing US sanctions on Iran.

A year later, Iran started to gradually roll back its commitments to the nuclear deal, which only allowed Tehran to enrich uranium to 3.65 per cent purity.

The IAEA says Iran has considerably increased its reserves of enriched uranium to 60 per cent, close to the 90 per cent needed to develop an atomic bomb.

It is against this backdrop that Grossi is schedule to visit Iran for the first time since May.

In a statement, the IAEA said it would hold "high-level meetings with the Iranian government" and conduct "technical discussions on all aspects".

Cameras unplugged 

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who came to office in July with hopes of improving ties with the West and having sanctions lifted, favours a revival of the nuclear deal.

But all efforts to get the nuclear agreement off life support have so far failed.

The IAEA chief has repeatedly called for more cooperation from Iran.

In recent years, Tehran has decreased its interaction with the UN agency by deactivating surveillance devices needed to monitor the nuclear programme and effectively barring its inspectors.

The foundations of Iran's nuclear programme date back to the late 1950s, when the United States signed a civil cooperation agreement with then-Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In 1970, Iran ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires signatory states to declare and place their nuclear materials under the IAEA control.

But with Iran threatening to hit back at Israel for its latest missile strikes, some lawmakers in the Islamic republic have called on the government to revise its nuclear doctrine to pursue nuclear weapons.

The parliamentarians called on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, to reconsider his long-standing religious edict or fatwa banning nuclear weapons.

The Islamic republic has maintained its policy against acquiring nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear activities were entirely peaceful.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese state media reported on Wednesday a third wave of Israeli raids on Hizbollah's south Beirut bastion in 24 hours, while the health ministry said another strike south of the capital killed eight people.

"Enemy aircraft targeted Beirut's southern suburbs", the official National News Agency (NNA) said, reporting six strikes.

AFPTV footage showed plumes of black smoke rising over the area following the strikes, about an hour after Israel's army issued evacuation warnings.

People hastily drove away from the area following the evacuation calls, with residents firing gunshots in the air to warn civilians to flee, an AFP photographer said.

Earlier Wednesday, an Israeli strike on hit Aramoun, a densely-packed area south of Beirut which is located outside Hizbollah's traditional strongholds.

The health ministry said that eight people had been killed in the strike.

"Body parts were recovered from the site and their identities are being verified," it added, after the NNA said the strike targeted a residential apartment at dawn.

An AFP photographer saw rescuers pulling bodies out of the rubble in Aramoun, where the four-storey building had partially collapsed.

The latest strikes came on the day that Israel's new defence minister told senior military commanders there would be no easing-up in the war against Hizbollah as he toured the northern border with Lebanon.

"We will make no ceasefires, we will not take our foot off the pedal, and we will not allow any arrangement that does not include the achievement of our war objectives," Israel Katz said on his first visit to the border region since his appointment last week.

"We will continue to strike Hizbollah everywhere," Katz added.

He said that Israel would not "allow any [ceasefire] arrangement that does not include achieving the objectives of the war", including "disarming Hizbollah, pushing them beyond the Litani River", which flows across southern Lebanon, "and creating conditions for the safe return" of residents of northern Israeli towns and villages to their homes.

Following Katz's comments, the Israeli army said air raid sirens were activated across central and northern Israel, adding that it had intercepted some of the "five projectiles" that had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

Hizbollah and Lebanese authorities say that more than 3,360 people have been killed since October last year when Hizbollah and Israel began engaging in cross-border clashes in the wake of the deadly attacks by its Gaza-based ally Hamas.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — US top diplomat Antony Blinken called Wednesday on Israel to implement "real and extended pauses" in fighting in Gaza to allow for aid deliveries, as a US-imposed deadline to improve conditions in the territory expired.

Blinken said Israel had taken multiple steps to address the humanitarian crisis ahead of the deadline set by outgoing President Joe Biden's administration -- but that more was needed.

"We need to see real and extended pauses in large areas of Gaza, pauses in any fighting, any combat, so that the assistance can effectively get to people who need it," Blinken told reporters during a visit to Brussels.

Gaza has been in the grips of a dire humanitarian crisis since Israel launched a sweeping assault on the territory following Hamas's unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023.

Last month, Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Israel setting a November 13 deadline to comply with US law on permitting humanitarian assistance, or risk a cut to military aid.

"The intent was to inject a sense of urgency with Israel to take necessary steps to address the dire humanitarian situation," Blinken said on Wednesday.

Israel has since moved to implement 12 of the 15 steps the US urged action on, but "three big issues" still needed to be addressed.

Enacting extended pauses in fighting was one.

The other two were allowing commercial trucks into the Palestinian territory and rescinding evacuation orders so that people could return to an area after Israel completed operations there, he said.

"Short of ending the war, which we believe now is the time to move to that, we have to see these humanitarian steps fully implemented," Blinken said.

Hamas's October 7 attack resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 43,665 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel announced the opening of an additional aid crossing into Gaza Tuesday, on the eve of a US deadline to boost relief deliveries, but aid agencies said it was not enough.

Gaza has been in the grips of a dire humanitarian crisis since the outbreak of war following Hamas' unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.

The United States last month warned Israel to improve the humanitarian conditions in Gaza or risk a cut to its military support.

A day before the deadline, the Israeli military said it opened the Kissufim crossing "as part of the effort and commitment to increase the volume and routes of aid" to Gaza.

"Food, water, medical supplies, and shelter equipment" were delivered to central and southern Gaza, the army said in a joint statement with COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories.

The army published video showing lorries loaded with sacks and pallets entering Gaza.

But the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and eight humanitarian groups said Israel was still not doing enough to get aid in.

The eight organisations including Oxfam and Save The Children said Israel "failed to comply" with US demands -- "at enormous human cost for Palestinian civilians in Gaza".

"The humanitarian situation in Gaza is now at its worst point since the war began in October 2023," they said in a joint statement.

Aid at 'lowest level' 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin warned Israel last month it had 30 days to ramp up aid deliveries to Gaza or risk losing some military assistance from its chief arms supplier.

The US letter, dated October 13, was sent ahead of the US presidential election won by Donald Trump, who has promised to give Israel freer rein.

Government spokesman David Mencer said on Tuesday that Israel took the letter "extremely seriously" and was "willing to get as much aid as possible through".

But the previous day, a senior military official said Israel had "a responsibility to make sure that terrorism does not enter Gaza under the auspices of aid", adding that the army had a few hours earlier found "a bag of flour filled with Kalashnikovs and ammunition" in a humanitarian convoy.

Asked on Tuesday about whether there were signs the situation had improved ahead of the US deadline, Louise Wateridge, an UNRWA emergencies officer, said "aid entering the Gaza Strip is at its lowest level in months".

The eight aid groups called on "the US government to make an immediate determination that Israel is in violation of its assurances".

The situation is at its worst in northern Gaza, where a UN-backed assessment at the weekend said famine was imminent.

Deadly strikes 

Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 43,665 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

"My uncle's family, they were all killed, there was no one left," a visibly exhausted Umm Muhammad Awda told AFP in Gaza City.

"Since the dawn prayer they were shelling us," she added.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Tuesday that at least 14 people were killed in Israeli strikes.

The Israeli forces announced the deaths of four soldiers in northern Gaza, bringing its losses in the territory to 376 since the start of ground operations on October 27, 2023.

Israel, Hizbollah trade fire 

Deadly Israeli strikes also pounded Lebanon where since September 23, Israel has stepped up its bombing campaign, mainly targeting Hizbollah strongholds in south Beirut and in the east and south.

Rocket fire from Lebanon killed two men in northern Israel, first responders said.

The Israeli military said a barrage of 10 rockets was fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, some of which were intercepted, while "others fell in the area".

Iran-backed militant group Hizbollah said it targeted an air base near Tel Aviv.

Lebanon's health ministry said at least 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes.

More than 3,280 people have been killed in Lebanon since the clashes began last year, the majority of them since late September, according to ministry figures.