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LONDON — UK-based lawyers said they have asked the British government to lift a ban on the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a petition that has drawn sharp criticism from opposition politicians.

The legal submission argues the ban contravenes Britain's human rights commitments, with the militants insisting on "the legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation."

The military wing of Hamas was designated a "terrorist group" by the UK in 2001. The United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terror group.

Hamas's proscription was extended in 2021 to include the political wing, with the group considered a "complex but single terrorist organisation", according to the government website.

In the UK, belonging to, encouraging and expressing support for a proscribed organisation, among other acts, are criminal offences.

The Home Office said it did not comment on proscription matters.

The submission to the UK interior ministry was announced by London-based firm Riverway Law on Wednesday. 

It added the right to resist "foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle, is moral, legitimate and explicitly enshrined in international law."

In retaliation, Israel vowed to crush Hamas and has relentlessly bombarded Gaza, with the death toll since the start of the war now at more than 50,000 people, mostly civilians, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Riverway Law said it was instructed by Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official.

By banning Hamas "Britain is effectively denying the Palestinians the right to defend themselves", the lawyers said in a statement on X.

The submission argues that the proscription of Hamas is "disproportionate" because the group "does not pose any threat" to Britain's national security.

The plea says the ban goes against Britain's human rights duties, including under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) -- which has become a target of UK's political right since Britain left the European Union in 2020.

The application has drawn sharp criticism from opposition politicians, with shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel slamming the group as a "evil, Iranian-backed terrorist organisation".

"Those campaigning to end the proscription of Hamas fail to understanding the seriousness of the threats this terrorist organisation poses", Patel said in a statement.

NAIROBI — South Sudanese forces air dropped improvised incendiary weapons last month to kill nearly 60 people, including children, in a restive northeastern region, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

The young nation has long been plagued by violence but a recent uptick has seen forces allied to President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar clash in the Upper Nile State.

These have imperilled a 2018 peace deal which ended a bloody five-year civil war, and concerned international observers who fear a return to widespread bloodshed.

"Interviewees described the use of improvised incendiary weapons in at least four attacks in Nasir, Longechuk, and Ulang counties, Upper Nile state, which killed at least 58 people and burned others severely," Human Rights Watch said.

"The government's use of these weapons in populated areas may amount to war crimes," it said, urging the United Nations to call on Juba to "cease its unlawful attacks".

The monitor also called for the "urgent deployment of peacekeeping forces" in the affected areas.

The government did not respond to AFP's request for comment.

Drawing on interviews with civilians across the impacted areas, HRW said between March 16-19 least 21 people were killed in Longechuk county's Mathiang village.

During the same period, attacks also targeted Nasir town. "Two officials said that at least 22 people were killed and dozens of homes burned" HRW added.

In Kuich in Ulang county on March 21, HRW said "three witnesses describe seeing what appeared to be a propeller-driven aircraft drop incendiary substances in barrels."

That attack left 15 dead, including three children, four witnesses told HRW. Seven people were in critical condition as of March 30.

Witnesses described victims left with horrific injuries.

"Their black skin is coming out. One man who died at the hospital was burned even his teeth," a witness told HRW.

Tensions have risen in the Upper Nile State region where Kiir's allies have accused Machar's forces of fomenting unrest, saying they were in league with the White Army, a loose band of armed youths from the vice president's Nuer ethnic community.

The government has said previously it has conducted air strikes in the area.

Information minister Michael Makuei Lueth told reporters March 17 the attacks were part of "security operations".

He added: "If you as a civilian happen to be there... then there is nothing we can do."

HODEIDA, Yemen — Yemen's Huthi media said on Wednesday the number of people killed in an air strike on Hodeida the day before that they blamed on the United States has risen to 10 people.

"The death toll rose to 10 as a result of the American enemy's massacre in a residential neighbourhood" of Hodeida, the Huthis' Al Masirah TV station said.

Health ministry spokesman Anis Al Asbahi had earlier said four children and two women had been killed.

Huthi media said the strike had targeted a residential area in the Red Sea port city. On Tuesday night, an AFP journalist heard three loud blasts in succession.

Huthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had downed a US drone, targeted an Israeli military site in the Tel Aviv area and launched drones at aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman.

Rebel-held areas of Yemen have seen near-daily strikes since Washington launched an air campaign against the Iran-backed Huthis on March 15 to force them to stop threatening vessels in key maritime routes.

Since then, the Huthis have also launched attacks targeting US military ships and Israel, claiming to be acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The rebels began targeting ships transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, as well as Israeli territory, after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, later pausing their attacks during a January ceasefire.

Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza at the start of March, and resumed its offensive on the Palestinian territory on March 18, ending the short-lived truce.

The new US campaign followed Huthi threats to resume attacks on vessels over Israel's Gaza blockade.

The Huthi attacks crippled the vital Red Sea route, which normally carries about 12 percent of world shipping traffic, forcing many companies to make a much longer detour around the tip of southern Africa.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Israel said Wednesday its troops are seizing "large areas" in Gaza and making the Palestinian territory "smaller and more isolated", as an air strike on a residential block killed at least 23 people.

Defence minister Israel Katz's comments come weeks into a renewed offensive by the military on the war-battered territory, which has displaced hundreds of thousands, while an aid blockade has revived the spectre of famine for its 2.4 million people.

"Large areas are being seized and added to Israel's security zones, leaving Gaza smaller and more isolated," Katz said during a visit to the newly announced Morag Corridor between the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Yunis.

Katz emphasised that Israel would keep increasing pressure on Gaza "until the hostages are freed and Hamas is defeated".

As the available space for Gazans recedes to expanding buffer zones, Katz said Israel was encouraging plans for "voluntary emigration... in accordance with the vision of the US president, which we are working to implement".

US President Donald Trump had earlier this year proposed a plan to develop Gaza into a "Riviera of the Middle East" while displacing its population elsewhere.

The Israeli military meanwhile continued to pound the territory on Wednesday.

Gaza's civil defence agency said an air strike on a residential building in Gaza City killed at least 23 people, most of them children or women, while the military said it targeted a "senior Hamas" fighter.

The strike took place in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City, the agency's spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

"The death toll from the Shujaiya massacre has risen to 23 martyrs, including eight children and eight women," he said, adding that more than 60 people were wounded.

"There are still people trapped under the rubble."

'Torn to pieces' 

Ayub Salim, a 26-year-old Shujaiya resident, told AFP he witnessed the strike on the four-storey block.

He said the area was hit with "multiple missiles" and was "overcrowded with tents, displaced people and homes".

"Shrapnel flew in all directions," he said, speaking of "a terrifying and indescribable scene".

"Dust and massive destruction filled the entire place, we couldn't see anything, just the screams and panic of the people".

Salim said the dead were "torn to pieces".

"Even now, emergency crews are still transporting the dead and the injured. It is truly a horrific massacre," he said.

A crew from the Gaza civil defence agency rushed to the scene, only to find several people trapped under the rubble, a rescuer said.

"This house was home to many people who believed they were safe. It was blown up over their heads," rescuer Ibrahim Abu al-Rish told AFP while men worked hard to clear out rubble behind him.

He added that the strike hit while many children were playing inside.

"We pulled out the remains of women and children. There are still people buried under the rubble," he said.

First responders and neighbours worked to break through the concrete floor of an entire storey that collapsed in the strike and trapped residents, AFP footage showed.

Taking turns swinging a sledgehammer through the thick, hard surface, they eventually broke a hole through which the bodies of children were extracted and taken away wrapped in dusty blankets.

 'Heinous massacre' 

When asked by AFP about the strike, the Israeli military said it "struck a senior Hamas terrorist who was responsible for planning and executing terrorist attacks" from the area.

It did not give the target's name.

Hamas condemned the strike as one of the "most heinous acts of genocide."

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry also condemned the strike as a "heinous massacre".

"The ministry considers it an official Israeli attempt to systematically kill our people en masse and destroy the very foundations of their existence in the Gaza Strip, thus forcing them to emigrate," it said in a statement.

Israel resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said on Wednesday that at least 1,482 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,846.

Hamas's October 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas's political bureau, told AFP on Tuesday that it was "necessary to reach a ceasefire" in Gaza.

Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that new negotiations were in the works aimed at getting more hostages released from Gaza.

HARES, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli troops killed a 30-year-old woman near the West Bank city of Salfit on Tuesday after what the army claimed was an attempted stabbing.

The ministry reported the death of Amana Ibrahim Mohammed Yaqub, 30, "who was shot by [sraeli] forces near Salfit", south of Nablus.

An AFP journalist reported seeing Yaqub's lifeless body by the roadside.

Footage shared on social media showed her lying on her back under a blanket, surrounded by soldiers.

Yaqub was a lawyer and mother of three from nearby Biddya, the village's mayor, Ahmed Abu Safiyeh, told AFP.

The area around Salfit is dense with Israeli settlements, including the town of Ariel.

Since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, violence has soared in the occupied West Bank. Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 918 Palestinians in the territory, according to health ministry figures.

Palestinian attacks and clashes during military raids have killed at least 33 Israelis, including soldiers, over the same period, according to Israeli figures.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — Nearly 400,000 Gaza residents have been displaced in the weeks since Israel resumed military operations in the territory, with relentless attacks leading to "large-scale civilian casualties," the UN secretary-general's spokesman said Monday.

"Survivors across Gaza are being displaced repeatedly and forced into an ever shrinking space where their basic needs just cannot be met," said spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

"Overall, we estimate that nearly 400,000 people have been displaced yet again since the breakdown of the ceasefire."

Much of the Gaza Strip's population of roughly 2.4 million people had already been displaced at least once between October 7, 2023 when the war began with a deadly Hamas raid into Israel, and the start of the ceasefire in January.

In a joint statement, the heads of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, World Health Organization, UNICEF and World Food Programme appealed "to world leaders to act -- firmly, urgently and decisively -- to ensure the basic principles of international humanitarian law are upheld."

Vast numbers of Gazans are "trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck" amid an Israeli humanitarian and commercial blockade in its second month, they added.

"We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life," the agency chiefs said.

"Assertions that there is now enough food to feed all Palestinians in Gaza are far from the reality on the ground, and commodities are running extremely low."