Region

GAZA STRIP — Dozens were killed or unaccounted for in Gaza on Thursday after Israeli strikes, on the day the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war.

With warrants also issued for Netanyahu's former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas's military chief, all three men face accusations of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the conflict sparked by the October 7 attack.

One strike near the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north of the territory left "dozens of people" dead or missing, the facility's director Hossam Abu Safiya told AFP.

Another strike was reported in a neighbourhood of Gaza City, with civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal saying 22 were dead.

"There is a headless body. We don't yet know who this is," Moataz al-Arouqi, who lives in the area, told AFP.

Since Hamas conducted the October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, Israel has been fighting a war in Gaza, which the militant group rules.

It vows to crush Hamas and to bring home the hostages seized by the group during the attack.

Israel has faced growing international criticism over its conduct of the Gaza war, including from its allies, despite global solidarity with the victims of October 7.

The ICC's move now theoretically limits the movement of Netanyahu as any of the court's 124 national members would be obliged to arrest him on their territory.

An arrest warrant has also been issued for Gallant, whom Netanyahu sacked as defence minister on November 5, and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif.

In August Israel said it had killed Deif in Gaza the previous month. Hamas has not confirmed his death.

The arrest warrants prompted swift and strong condemnation from Israel, with Netanyahu branding the decision "anti-Semitic" and comparing it to a "modern-day Dreyfus trial".

He was referring to the 19th century Alfred Dreyfus affair in which a French Jewish army captain was wrongly convicted of treason.

Hamas on the other hand hailed the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, calling the decision an "important step towards justice". It did not mention the warrant for Deif.

Lebanon front 

Israel is also fighting Hamas ally Hizbollah in Lebanon. Both groups are backed by Israel's arch-foe Iran.

On Thursday, US envoy Amos Hochstein was due to meet Netanyahu to seek a truce in the war in Lebanon.

Hochstein's meetings in Lebanon this week appeared to indicate some progress in efforts to end that war.

On the Gaza front, the United States vetoed on Wednesday a UN Security Council push for a ceasefire that Washington said would have emboldened Hamas.

The health ministry in Gaza said the death toll from the resulting war has reached 44,056 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.

 'Freedom to act' 

Following the October 7 attack, Hizbollah began launching cross-border strikes on Israel in support of Hamas.

In September, Israel expanded the focus of its war from Gaza to Lebanon, vowing to fight Hizbollah until tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the cross-border fire are able to return home.

With Hochstein in Lebanon, Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Wednesday said that any ceasefire deal must ensure Israel still has the "freedom to act" against Hizbollah.

Hizbollah leader Naim Qassem threatened to strike Israeli commercial hub Tel Aviv in retaliation for attacks on Lebanon's capital.

"Israel cannot defeat us and cannot impose its conditions on us," Qassem said in a defiant televised address.

In Lebanon, Hochstein met with officials including parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Hizbollah.

200 children 

More than 3,558 people in Lebanon have been killed since the clashes began, Lebanese authorities have said, most since late September. 

Among them were more than 200 children, according to the United Nations.

On the Israeli side, a total of 82 Israeli soldiers and 47 civilians have died in the hostilities on the Lebanese front.

Israel has intensified strikes on neighbouring Syria, the main conduit of weapons for Hizbollah from its backer Iran.

In the latest attack, a Syria war monitor said 79 pro-Iran fighters were killed in strikes on Palmyra in the east of the country.

Those killed in Wednesday's strikes included 53 fighters from pro-Iran Syrian groups and 26 foreign fighters, mostly from Iraq as well as four from Lebanon's Hizbollah, the monitor said.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country. 

Strikes in Lebanon 

On Thursday, successive rounds of strikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hizbollah's main bastion, following evacuation calls by the Israeli military.

One post on X by Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said the military targeted "terrorist command headquarters and Hizbollah military infrastructure" in the area.

Strikes also hit south Lebanon, including the border town of Khiam where Israeli troops are pushing to advance, according to Lebanon's official National News Agency.

Hizbollah claimed a series of attacks on Thursday, including one on a base near south Israel's Ashdod, its deepest so far.

On Thursday, rocket fire from Lebanon hit a playground in northern Israel, killing one man, Israeli first responders said.

Hizbollah was the only armed group in Lebanon that did not surrender its weapons following the 1975-1990 civil war.

It has maintained a formidable arsenal and holds sway not only on the battlefield but also in Lebanese politics.

HASSAN SHAMI — A decade after the Daesh terror group extremists rampaged through northern Iraq, Moaz Fadhil and his eight children finally returned to their village after languishing for years in a displacement camp.

Their home, Hassan Shami, is just a stone's throw from the tent city where they had been living, and it still bears the scars of the fight against Daesh.

The extremists seized a third of Iraq, ruling their self-declared "caliphate" with an iron fist, before an international coalition wrestled control from them in 2017.

Seven years on, many of the village's homes are still in ruins and lacking essential services, but Fadhil said he felt an "indescribable joy" upon moving back in August.

Iraq -- marred by decades of war and turmoil even before the rise of Daesh -- is home to more than a million internally displaced people.

Baghdad has been pushing for the closure of the displacement camps, with the country having attained a degree of comparative stability in recent years. 

Most of the camps in federal Iraq have now been closed, but around 20 remain in the northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which according to the United Nations house more than 115,000 displaced people.

But for many, actually returning home can be a difficult task.

After getting the green light from Kurdish security forces to leave the camp, Fadhil moved his family into a friend's damaged house because his own is a complete ruin.

 'Beautiful memories' 

"Water arrives by tanker trucks and there is no electricity," said the 53-year-old.

Although the rubble has been cleared from the structure he now lives in, the cinder block walls and rough concrete floors remain bare.

Across Hassan Shami, half-collapsed houses sit next to concrete buildings under construction by those residents who can afford to rebuild.

Some have installed solar panels to power their new lives.

A small new mosque stands, starkly white, beside an asphalt road.

"I was born here, and before me my father and mother," said Fadhil, an unemployed farmer.

"I have beautiful memories with my children, my parents."

The family survives mainly on the modest income brought in by his eldest son, who works as a day labourer on building sites.

"Every four or five days he works a day" for about $8, said Fadhil.

In an effort to close the camps and facilitate returns, Iraqi authorities are offering families around $3,000 to go back to their places of origin.

To do so, displaced people must also get security clearance -- to ensure they are not wanted for jihadist crimes -- and have their identity papers or property rights in order.

But of the 11,000 displaced people still living in six displacement camps near Hassan Shami, 600 are former prisoners, according to the UN.

They were released after serving up to five years for crimes related to membership of IS.

Not that simple 

For them, going home can mean further complications.

There's the risk of ostracism by neighbours or tribes for their perceived affiliation with Daesh atrocities, potential arrest at a checkpoint by federal forces or even a second trial.

Among them is 32-year-old Rashid, who asked that we use a pseudonym because of his previous imprisonment in Kurdistan for belonging to the extremist group.

He said he hopes the camp next to Hassan Shami does not close.

"I have a certificate of release [from prison], everything is in order... But I can't go back there", he said of federal Iraq. 

"If I go back it's 20 years" in jail, he added, worried that he would be tried again in an Iraqi court.

Ali Abbas, spokesperson for Iraq's migration ministry, said that those who committed crimes may indeed face trial after they leave the camps.

"No one can prevent justice from doing its job", he said, claiming that their families would not face repercussions.

The government is working to ensure that families who return have access to basic services, Abbas added.

In recent months, Baghdad has repeatedly tried to set deadlines for Kurdistan to close the camps, even suing leaders of the autonomous region before finally opting for cooperation over coercion.

Imrul Islam of the Norwegian Refugee Council said displacement camps by definition are supposed to be temporary, but warned against their hasty closure.

When people return, "you need schools. You need hospitals. You need roads. And you need working markets that provide opportunities for livelihoods," he said.

Without these, he said, many families who try to resettle in their home towns would end up returning to the camps. 

WASHINGTON — Senior US and Israeli officials will meet in early December to address American concerns over harm to civilians caused by military operations in Gaza, the State Department said Tuesday.

The United States has regularly voiced concerns to key ally Israel over American-supplied weapons being used in strikes that have killed civilians in the Gaza Strip.

However, it has only once exercised the ultimate US leverage -- holding some of the billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.

The State Department has also opened several investigations into Israeli strikes using US-supplied weapons that killed Gaza civilians. But no conclusions have been made public, and US military aid has continued to flow.

The December meeting will be the first of a new channel designed to "inform the ongoing work that the State Department has to do to make assessments about the use of US-provided weapons," spokesman Matthew Miller said. 

Israel's use of the weapons would breach US law if it were determined the country had deliberately targeted and killed civilians, and US authorities are looking at specific instances to see whether that is the case.

"There are a number of incidents that we have had questions about and we've had concerns about," Miller said.

He added that "we set up this new channel because we wanted to formalize a mechanism for getting answers to some of these questions."

Miller declined to specify where the meeting would take place.

The Biden administration has long called for such a channel, which was included in a letter Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent to Israel in mid-October.

The letter additionally gave Israel a month to allow more assistance into Gaza or face cutoffs of some US weapons.

However the United States ultimately decided not to take action, despite Israel not meeting metrics on the number of aid trucks and a new UN-backed assessment warning of imminent famine in Gaza.

Earlier Tuesday, a handful of left-leaning senators called on the Biden administration to halt arms sales to Israel, accusing the United States of playing a key role in the "atrocities" of the war in Gaza.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the death toll from the ongoing war has reached 43,972 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.

The war first began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — US envoy Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon Wednesday, seeking to hammer out a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hizbolllah, as the Iran-backed group battled Israeli troops in the south of the country.

The United States and France have spearheaded efforts for a truce in the conflict, which escalated in late September after nearly a year of deadly exchanges of fire between Hizbolllah and Israel.

On Tuesday, Hochstein said an end to the war was "now within our grasp", while one of his main interlocutors, Hizbolllah-allied parliament speaker Nabih Berri, said the situation was "good, in principle".

Speaking to pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat, Berri said his team and US representatives still had "some technical details" to settle.

Hochstein also met Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and army chief Joseph Aoun, as well as Christian leader Samir Geagea.

On Wednesday, he held another meeting with Berri.

A Lebanon-based diplomat, requesting anonymity, said "progress" had been made in the talks.

Hizbolllah chief Naim Qassem said Wednesday his group would not accept any truce that violates Lebanese sovereignty, as Israel demands freedom to act against the Iran-backed movement.

Hizbolllah seeks a "complete and comprehensive end to the aggression" and "the preservation of Lebanon's sovereignty... the Israeli enemy cannot enter (Lebanese territory) whenever it wants", Qassem said in a pre-recorded speech.

"Israel cannot defeat us and cannot impose its conditions on us," he added, as US envoy Amos Hochstein concluded a two-day visit to Beirut seeking to broker a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hizbolllah.

Hochstein on Tuesday in Beirut had said he saw "a real opportunity" to end the fighting, and on Wednesday said he was heading to Israel "try to bring this to a close if we can".

In Beirut, he met twice with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hizbolllah ally who has led mediation efforts on behalf of the Iran-backed group.

"We have received the (US) paper and we have made some remarks," Qassem said, adding that the comments "and those of speaker Berri, which are in harmony, have been communicated to the American envoy".

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Wednesday that any ceasefire deal must ensure Israel has the "freedom to act" against the Lebanese militant group.

"In any agreement we will reach, we will need to keep the freedom to act if there will be violations," he told foreign ambassadors ahead of Hochstein's expected arrival in Israel.

The Hizbolllah chief said a ceasefire depended on "the Israeli response and the seriousness" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Qassem also said that "the response must be expected on central Tel Aviv", after deadly strikes on three central Beirut districts in recent days.

One of the strikes killed Hizbolllah's spokesman Mohammed Afif and four members of his media team.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The United States on Wednesday vetoed a UN Security Council push to call for a ceasefire in Gaza that Washington said would have emboldened Hamas.

"We made clear throughout negotiations we could not support an unconditional ceasefire that failed to release the hostages," said US ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the United States on Wednesday for vetoing a call for a ceasefire in Gaza at the UN Security Council, saying it "emboldens Israel to continue its crimes".

"The US decision to exercise its veto for the fourth time emboldens Israel to continue its crimes against innocent civilians in Palestine and Lebanon," it said in comments carried by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

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.