Region

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Explosions, air strikes and gunfire rattled northern Gaza on Saturday, the third day of an Israeli military operation that has uprooted tens of thousands of Palestinians and compounded what the UN called "unbearable" living conditions in the territory.

An AFP correspondent reported ongoing explosions from the Shujaiya area near Gaza City, with a resident saying bodies were visible on the streets.

The armed wings of both Hamas and the Palestinian fighter group Islamic Jihad said on Saturday they were engaged in ongoing fighting with Israeli forces in the area.

Israel's military, meanwhile, said its operations were continuing in Shujaiya where fighting "above and below the ground" left a "large number" of fighters dead.

A resurgence of fighting in the area comes months after Israel had declared the command structure of Hamas fighters dismantled in northern Gaza.

Last Sunday Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the "intense phase" of the war was winding down after almost nine months, but experts see a potentially prolonged next phase.

The Gaza war has also led to soaring tensions on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, leading Iran on Saturday to warn of an "obliterating" war if Israel attacked Lebanon.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,834 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. It reported at least 69 deaths over the previous 48 hours.

Fleeing empty-handed

Mohammed Harara, 30, said he and his family, young and old, felt as though they would become part of that toll.

He said they fled from their home in Shujaiya with nothing, “due to the bombardment by Israeli planes, tanks and drones” that they barely survived.

“We couldn’t carry anything from the house. We left the food, flour, canned goods, mattresses, and blankets,” Harara said.

Israel’s military on Friday said it was conducting “targeted raids” backed by air strikes against Hamas militants in the Shujaiya area.

The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that “about 60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced” from the area this week.

AFPTV images on Saturday showed men moving belongings on a donkey cart. Some people were pushed in wheelchairs. Children walked with backpacks past piles of dusty debris.

“I saw a tank in front of the Shuhada mosque firing” at targets, said Abdelkareem Al Mamluk. “There were martyrs in the street.”

Elsewhere in the coastal territory, the civil defence agency on Saturday said four bodies were pulled from an apartment after an Israeli strike in the central region.

Further south, in the Rafah area, witnesses reported dead and wounded after a new incursion by Israeli troops.

Tarek Qandeel, director of the medical centre in Al Maghazi, central Gaza, said the facility was seriously damaged in the bombing of a neighbouring house, making it the latest Gaza medical facility affected by the war.

The United Nations, in a report on Friday that cited Gaza’s health ministry, said “about 70 per cent of health infrastructure has been destroyed”.

Separately, a UN spokeswoman, Louise Wateridge, said by video-link that she had just returned to central Gaza after four weeks outside the territory.

“It’s really unbearable,” she said, describing a “significantly deteriorated” situation.

“There’s no water there, there’s no sanitation, there’s no food,” and people are returning to live in “empty shells” of buildings.

In the absence of bathrooms they are “relieving themselves anywhere they can”, Wateridge said.

The UN says most of Gaza’s population is displaced.

TEHRAN — The sole reformist in Iran's presidential election, Masoud Pezeshkian, will face the ultraconservative Saeed Jalili in a run-off, authorities said on Saturday, following a vote marred by historically low turnout.

Pezeshkian secured 42.4 per cent of the vote, while Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, came second with 38.6 per cent, according to figures from Iran's elections authority.

Conservative parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was next with 13.8 per cent, while the only other candidate, conservative cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi, got less than 1 per cent.

"None of the candidates could garner the absolute majority of the votes," electoral authority spokesman Mohsen Eslami said.

In his first post-election remarks, Pezeshkian thanked his supporters and urged them to vote again next Friday "to save the country from poverty, lies, discrimination and injustice".

"I hope your presence will be the basis of a new voice for change in attitude, behaviour, conversation and in the distribution and allocation of resources," he added in a video published on the website of the reformist newspaper Etemad.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had called for a high turnout ahead of Friday's vote.

Only slightly more than 40 per cent of the 61 million electorate took part — a record low turnout for the Islamic republic — and more than one million ballots were spoiled.

The poll had been scheduled to take place in 2025 but was brought forward by the death of ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.

The Guardian Council, which vets candidates, had originally approved six contenders.

But a day ahead of the election, two of them — the ultraconservative mayor of Tehran Alireza Zakani and Raisi's vice president Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi — dropped out.

After the final results were released, they both asked their supporters to vote for Jalili in the July 5 runoff.

Ghalibaf followed suit, asking “all revolutionary forces and supporters” to get behind Jalili’s bid for the presidency.

In the 2021 election that brought Raisi to power, the Guardian Council disqualified many reformists and moderates, prompting many voters to shun the election.

The turnout then was just under 49 per cent, which at the time was the lowest in any presidential election in Iran.

Friday’s vote took place amid heightened regional tensions over the Gaza war, a dispute with the West over Iran’s nuclear programme and domestic discontent over the state of Iran’s sanctions-hit economy.

Opposition groups, especially in the diaspora, meanwhile called for a boycott, questioning the credibility of elections.

Pezeshkian, 69, is a heart surgeon who has represented the northwestern city of Tabriz in parliament since 2008.

He served as health minister under Iran’s last reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who held office from 1997 to 2005 and has endorsed Pezeshkian’s bid in the current elections.

‘Resistance’

Pezeshkian criticised Raisi’s government for a lack of transparency during nationwide protests triggered by the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.

Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

In recent campaigning, Pezeshkian called for “constructive relations” with Washington and European countries in order to “get Iran out of its isolation”.

People, however, are not optimistic, with 32-year-old trader Sina saying, “there will not be much change” even if Pezeshkian is elected president.

“If he wins, he will have to work with a parliament whose head is Ghalibaf and the Supreme National Security Council whose head is Jalili,” he added.

Jalili is widely recognised for his uncompromising anti-West stance.

The 58-year-old has held several senior positions in the Islamic republic, including in Khamenei’s office in the early 2000s.

He is currently one of Khamenei’s representatives in the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s highest security body.

“I would like Mr. Jalili to become the president and lead Iran to progress with religious rationality based on resistance,” said Shima, 43-year-old filmmaker in Tehran.

On Saturday, the reformist newspaper Sazandegi ran the headline “Long live hope” on its front page, while the state-run Iran daily hailed what it called a “strong” turnout.

Regardless of the result, Iran’s next president will be in charge of applying state policy outlined by the supreme leader, who wields ultimate authority in the country.

Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said Friday’s vote went smoothly.

“The presidential election was conducted in complete security, in perfect health, with very serious competition and with the valuable presence of people at the ballot boxes,” he said.

The Tasnim news agency said however that militants attacked a vehicle carrying ballot boxes in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, leaving two policemen dead and others wounded.

PORT SUDAN, Sudan — More than half of Sudan's population is facing high levels of "acute food insecurity", a situation exacerbated by the country's devastating war, said a report cited by the United Nations on Thursday.

Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The conflict in the northeast African country of 48 million has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

"Fourteen months into the conflict, Sudan is facing the worst levels of acute food insecurity" that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, has recorded, the report said.

The crisis would impact "approximately 25.6 million people", it said, including 755,000 in famine conditions and an additional 8.5 million facing "emergency" situations.

It pointed to "a stark and rapid deterioration of the food security situation" compared with the previous figures published in December, with a 45 per cent increase in people facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

"The conflict has not only triggered mass displacement and disruption of supply routes... it has also severely limited access to essential humanitarian assistance, exacerbating an already dire situation," the IPC said.

It further cited "highly dysfunctional health services, water contamination and poor sanitation and hygiene conditions".

Starvation as weapon

The IPC report comes a day after United Nations experts accused Burhan's Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Daglo's Rapid Support Forces of using starvation as a weapon of war.

"Both the SAF and the RSF are using food as a weapon and starving civilians," said the experts, including the special rapporteur on the right to food.

They also said foreign governments providing military support to both the army and the RSF were "complicit" in war crimes.

Both sides have been accused of attacking activists and aid workers, looting or obstructing aid and targeting infrastructure.

On Thursday, the IPC reported that 14 areas of the country, home to millions of people, were “at risk of famine”, that could take hold between June and September 2024.

The regions — including besieged El Fasher in North Darfur, parts of the capital Khartoum and key displacement centres in Darfur and South Kordofan — are also those most affected by direct fighting.

Some, including Tuti Island in the centre of Khartoum, have been under an effective siege by both forces for over a year.

Aid agencies and the UN have repeatedly warned that the already dire humanitarian crisis could become much worse as the fighting spreads, displacing even more people.

Just this week, thousands were forced to flee the south-eastern town of Sennar after an RSF attack on nearby Jebel Moya, eyewitnesses told AFP, raising fears the front line is once again shifting south and east.

Sennar, a key state hosting over half a million displaced people already, connects central Sudan to the army-controlled south and east, where hundreds of thousands more are sheltering.

The IPC report “confirms what humanitarian actors and civilians on the ground already know: famine is at the door”, said Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, head of humanitarian organisation Mercy Corps.

“History has shown that by the time a famine is officially declared, people are already dying at a horrifying pace,” she added.

Aid workers have long warned the difficulty of accessing data has prevented the declaration of an all-out famine, but starvation is already claiming lives across the country.

Even in Port Sudan, the country’s new de facto capital under army control, displacement centres are packed with “infants with stick-thin arms” showing “dangerously high malnutrition levels”, the World Food Programme said on Thursday.

According to WFP country director Eddie Rowe, it is still possible “to avert an outright famine”, if agencies are granted “unfettered access” and adequate funding.

By June, the UN’s humanitarian response plan for Sudan — totalling $2.7 billion — was only 17.3 per cent funded.

TEHRAN — Two ultraconservative candidates have pulled out of Iran's Friday presidential vote, leaving four contenders including one reformist still in the race.

Tehran's ultraconservative mayor, Alireza Zakani, announced his withdrawal in a post on social media platform X on Thursday, after earlier denying he was ending his campaign.

Zakani's withdrawal came hours after a statement by the Ministry of Interior confirming the exit of Amirhossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, another ultraconservative.

In his post, Zakani urged two other candidates to unite.

Zakani said ultraconservative Saeed Jalili, 58, Iran's former nuclear negotiator, and conservative Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, 62, the speaker of the parliament, should "unite and not leave the revolutionary forces' rightful demands unanswered".

Zakani, 58, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, has served as Tehran’s mayor since August 2021.

In the 2021 presidential election, Zakani left the race to endorse President Ebrahim Raisi.

The death of Raisi in a helicopter crash in May brought forward the election.

Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, who was Raisi’s vice-president, “announced his withdrawal to the Ministry of Interior” on Wednesday, the ministry said in a statement.

He ended his campaign without endorsing a specific candidate.

Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, 53, is a medical doctor and a staunch supporter of Raisi’s government who also serves as head of the Martyrs’ Foundation, tasked with providing support to the families of those killed in service to the country.

In the 2021 presidential election, he secured 3.5 per cent of the vote.

“To preserve the unity of the forces of the revolution ... I will withdraw from continuing the path” to the presidential election, Ghazizadeh-Hashemi said in a post on X late Wednesday.

In his message, the vice president urged other conservative and ultraconservative candidates to “also agree” on one candidate to offer a united front.

Along with Jalili and Ghalibaf, those still seeking the presidency are veteran politician Mostafa Pourmohammadi, 64, who is the only cleric in the running, and Massoud Pezeshkian, 69, the oldest candidate and sole reformist, backed by former president Hassan Rouhani.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Fighting raged on Wednesday between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters in Gaza's southern city of Rafah, witnesses said, as fears grow of a wider regional war drawing in Lebanese Hamas ally Hizbollah.

Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip however appeared to ease days after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested the "intense phase" of the war was nearing its end, and as his defence minister visited Washington for crisis talks.

As the war in Gaza nears its 10th month, Israel's top ally the United States warned it of the risk of a major conflict against Iran-backed militant group Hizbollah in Lebanon following an escalation in cross-border fire.

“Another war between Israel and Hizbollah could easily become a regional war, with terrible consequences for the Middle East,” US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told his visiting Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant.

“Diplomacy is by far the best way to prevent more escalation,” Austin said.

Top Israeli officials including Netanyahu have suggested they were open to a diplomatic resolution of the border tensions, though Gallant said Israel should be ready for “every possible scenario”.

Israel’s military said last week plans for an offensive in Lebanon were “approved and validated”, prompting fresh threats from Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

In Beirut on Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned that any “miscalculation” could trigger all-out war and urged “extreme restraint”.

Canada’s Foreign Minister Melanie Joly meanwhile told her country’s citizens in Lebanon to protectively leave “while they can”.

On the ground in Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt, witnesses reported clashes during the night, and the Israeli military said its air force struck a rocket launch site.

UN agencies said 10 Gazan children a day are losing one or both legs and half a million Palestinians in the besieged territory suffer “catastrophic” hunger.

Aid group ‘outraged’ 

The civil defence agency in Gaza and hospital medics said at least four people, including three children, were killed in a strike early on Wednesday targeting a house in Beit Lahia, in the north.

Aside from that strike, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP, “there have been almost no attacks” and “the rest of the areas in the Gaza Strip are calm compared to yesterday”.

An air raid on Tuesday killed Fadi Al Wadiya, an employee of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who the Israeli military said was a “significant operative” for Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group which has fought alongside Hamas.

MSF said on social media platform X that it was “outraged” by Wadiya’s killing in a strike in Gaza City.

“The attack killed Fadi, along with five other people including three children while he was cycling to work near the MSF clinic where he was providing care,” the charity said.

UN and humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that aid workers are not safe in Gaza, impeding their desperately needed efforts delivering aid for Gaza’s 2.4 million people.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,658 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza’s health ministry said.

The deaths include 10 members of Qatar-based Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh’s family, including his sister, who Palestinian officials said were killed in a Tuesday strike.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned of the war’s dire impact on children.

“We have every day 10 children who are losing one leg or two legs on average,” Lazzarini told reporters, with amputations often taking place “in quite horrible conditions” and sometimes without anaesthesia.

“Ten per day, that means around 2,000 children after the more than 260 days of this brutal war.”

Meanwhile the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification partnership said its March warning of imminent famine in north Gaza had not materialised, but around 495,000 people still face “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity”.

“The situation in Gaza remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of famine across the whole Gaza Strip,” it said in a report.

Netanyahu on Sunday said “the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah”, which the Israeli military sees as Hamas’s last stronghold, with some troops to be redeployed to the northern border with Lebanon.

Mairav Zonszein, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the military would likely “move to rolling operations” in Gaza and “always keep some troops on the ground” in strategic areas of the territory.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — UN agencies sounded the alarm about war-torn Gaza on Tuesday, saying that 10 children a day are losing one or both legs and half-a-million Palestinians suffer "catastrophic" hunger.

There was no let-up in Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip and fighting against the Palestinian fighter group Hamas over the October 7 surprise attack, as it maintained the siege on the territory's 2.4 million people.

Palestinian officials said one strike killed 10 members of Qatar-based Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh's family, including his sister.

Israel's military did not immediately confirm the strike, which the civil defence agency in Hamas-ruled Gaza said hit the family's house in the northern Al Shati refugee camp, leaving some bodies trapped under the rubble.

The military said its forces struck Hamas operatives "inside school compounds" in Al Shati and another area of northern Gaza overnight, accusing them of involvement in the October 7 attack and "in holding hostages captive".

Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP: "There are 10 martyrs and several wounded as a result of the strike, including Zahr Haniyeh, sister of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh."

Haniyeh lost three sons and four grandchildren in a strike in April, when Israel’s military accused them of “terrorist activities”.

At the time, the Hamas chief said about 60 of his relatives had died in the Gaza war.

The reported strike came three days after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the “intense phase” of the war was winding down, but that the war would continue.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, in a briefing in Geneva warned of the war’s dire impact on children in Gaza.

“Basically we have every day 10 children who are losing one leg or two legs on average,” Lazzarini told reporters.

Citing figures from the UN children’s agency UNICEF, he said that figure “does not even include the arms and the hands, and we have many more” of these.

“Ten per day, that means around 2,000 children after the more than 260 days of this brutal war,” Lazzarini said.

He said amputation often takes place “in quite horrible conditions”, sometimes without anaesthesia.

The UN’s Rome-based World Food Programme, meanwhile, said a new report “paints a stark picture of ongoing hunger”.

The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) partnership said its March warning of imminent famine in the north of the Palestinian territory had not materialised.

“However, the situation in Gaza remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of famine across the whole Gaza Strip,” the report said, warning against complacency.

It said around 495,000 people — around 22 per cent of the territory’s population, according to the UN — are still facing “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity”.

Another 745,000 people are classified as in a food security emergency.

Looking at Israel’s longer-term strategy, National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Tuesday that striking Hamas was not enough, and that an “alternative” leadership must take the helm in Gaza.

“Hamas cannot be made to disappear, as it’s an idea,” Hanegbi told a conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya about the Islamist militant group.

“Therefore you need an alternative idea, not just damage to its military capabilities. And the alternative is local leadership that is prepared to live alongside Israel.”

Meanwhile, in a politically volatile ruling that could upend Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, Israel’s top court said the government “must act” to draft ultra-Orthodox Jewish men to military service.

Students of Jewish seminaries have historically been granted sweeping exemptions from the otherwise mandatory service, but calls within Israel for more ultra-Orthodox men to join army ranks have swelled during the war, which has seen mass mobilisation.

WASHINGTON — The United States warned Israel on Tuesday that a conflict with Hizbollah could spark a regional war, as UN agencies said 10 children a day are losing one or both legs and half-a-million Palestinians suffer "catastrophic" hunger in Gaza.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin met his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant at the Pentagon, saying diplomacy is the best option as fears of a major war against Iran-backed militant group Hizbollah  in Lebanon have grown after months of cross-border fire.

"Another war between Israel and Hizbollah could easily become a regional war, with terrible consequences for the Middle East," Austin said. "Diplomacy is by far the best way to prevent more escalation."

Gallant, speaking at the opening of the meeting with Austin, said that "we are working closely together to achieve an agreement but we must also discuss readiness on every possible scenario".

Israel’s military said last week plans for an offensive in Lebanon were “approved and validated” amid escalating cross-border clashes, but Washington is seeking to lower the temperature and head off another major Middle East conflict.

In Beirut, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned that “miscalculation” could trigger all-out war between Israel and Hizbollah , and urged “extreme restraint”.

Hizbollah claimed responsibility for multiple attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Tuesday, while Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported Israeli air strikes in parts of southern Lebanon.

Baerbock met Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who said the best way to reach “a return to calm in south Lebanon is to put an end to the Israeli aggression... and fully apply United Nations Resolution 1701”, according to a statement from his office.

The resolution ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah  and called for the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers to be the only armed forces deployed in the country’s south.

Baerbock also met with her Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib during her brief trip to Beirut, which came after visits to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

She noted that Lebanon’s hosting of many refugees poses “major challenges”, referring to Syrians who have fled conflict in their country across the border since 2011.

“We will therefore provide another 18 million euros ($19 million) for humanitarian aid — specifically for food, accommodation and doctors,” she said in the statement.

On a previous visit in January, the German minister pledged 15 million euros to bolster the Lebanese army, which like other national institutions has faced funding problems since the country’s economy collapsed in late 2019.

Several Western diplomats have visited Lebanon in recent months, seeking to dial down cross-border tensions, including US envoy Amos Hochstein who last week called for “urgent” de-escalation.

On Tuesday, Canada urged its citizens in Lebanon to leave “while they can”, while US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin warned a conflict between Israel and Hizbollah  could spark a regional war.

Eight months of cross-border violence has killed at least 481 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also including 94 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed in the country’s north.

TEHRAN — Iranians broadly deplore Western sanctions that have battered the economy, but the country's six presidential candidates offer differing solutions — assuming the winner gets a say on foreign policy.

Punishing US sanctions, reimposed following Washington's withdrawal from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal, have brought years of economic hardships, fuelling political malaise and wide popular discontent.

With the June 28 snap election fast approaching, debates between the candidates vying for Iran's second-highest office have featured a key question: Should Tehran mend ties with the West?

Under the late president Ebrahim Raisi, who died last month in a helicopter crash, Western governments have expanded sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme as well as its support for militant groups across the Middle East and for Russia in its war in Ukraine.

The sanctions have sharply reduced Iran's oil revenues, heavily restricted trade and contributed to soaring inflation, high unemployment and a record low for the Iranian rial against the US dollar.

At Tehran's bustling Grand Bazaar, shopkeeper Hamid Habibi, 54, said years of sanctions "have hit people very hard".

"Sanctions should be removed and ties mended with the US and European countries," he said.

In two televised debates focused on the economy ahead of the presidential polls, "almost all the candidates explained that the sanctions have had devastating effects", said Fayyaz Zahed, a professor of international relations at the University of Tehran.

"It is crucial to resolve this issue to alleviate the people's suffering," he said.

While the six contenders — five conservatives and a sole reformist — have all vowed to tackle the economic hardships, they offered varying views on Iran's relations with the West.

'Please the enemy'

"If we could lift the sanctions, Iranians could live comfortably," said reformist candidate Massoud Pezeshkian, considered one of three frontrunners.

Pezeshkian, who is backed by key reformist groups in Iran, called for “constructive relations” with Washington and European capitals in order to “get Iran out of its isolation”.

On the campaign trail, he had the support of Mohammad Javad Zarif, a former foreign minister who helped secure the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and insists it had positive impact on the Iranian economy.

Since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018, Iran has gradually reduced its commitment to its terms, meant to curb nuclear activity which Tehran has maintained was for peaceful purposes.

Diplomatic efforts to revive the deal have long stalled as tensions between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly flared.

Former president Hassan Rouhani, whose government negotiated the deal, said the sanctions cost Iranians “$100 billion a year, directly or indirectly, from the sale of oil and petrochemicals and the discounts they give” — in reference to preferential trade with China, a signatory to the 2015 agreement.

Ultraconservative presidential candidate Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, has called for Tehran to press ahead with its long-running anti-Western policy.

“The international community is not made up of just two or three Western countries,” Jalili has repeatedly said in debates and campaign rallies.

He said Iran should bolster its ties with China and Russia, and forge stronger relations with Arab countries, particularly regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia.

Conservative candidate Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the incumbent parliament speaker, has offered a more pragmatic approach, saying Iran should negotiate with Western countries only if it stands to gain an “economic advantage”.

Ghalibaf called for increasing Tehran’s nuclear capabilities, a strategy he said was already “forcing the West to negotiate with Iran”.

Zahed, the international relations professor, said Jalili has positioned himself as “the most inflexible candidate on the diplomatic level”.

In any case, the expert added, the next president will have limited say over strategic issues in the Islamic republic where supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, wields ultimate authority.

On Saturday, Khamenei urged the candidates to avoid making any remarks that would “please the enemy” — in reference to the West, mainly the United States.

The president “could only influence foreign policy” if he “earned the trust” of Khamenei and Iran’s most influential government institutions, Zahed said.

GENEVA — The head of the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees warned on Monday that a breakdown of civil order in Gaza had allowed widespread looting and smuggling and blocked aid delivery.

More than eight months of war have led to desperate humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip and repeated UN warnings of famine.

"Gaza has been decimated," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told the agency's advisory body.

"We have witnessed unprecedented failures of humanity in a territory marked by decades of violence," he said, according to a written version of his address to the event in Geneva, which took place behind closed doors.

"Palestinians and Israelis have experienced terrible losses and suffered immensely."

Pointing to the dire humanitarian situation since the war erupted following Hamas fighters' October 7 attack inside Israel, he warned that Gazans were in "a living hell, a nightmare from which they cannot wake".

Desperation among Gaza's 2.4 million population has increased as fighting rages, sparking warnings from agencies that they are unable to deliver aid.

Vital supplies of food have piled up undistributed on the Palestinian side of the Karam Abu Salem crossing, a key conduit for aid to enter Gaza.

Israel, which has relentlessly attacked the besieged Palestinian territory since October, claims it has let supplies in.

UN agencies and aid groups have repeatedly sounded the alarm about severe shortages of food and other essentials in the Gaza Strip, exacerbated by overland access restrictions and the closure of the key Rafah crossing with Egypt since Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side in early May.

Lazzarini insisted on Monday that the “catastrophic levels of hunger across the Gaza Strip are the result of human action”.

“The breakdown of civil order has resulted in rampant looting and smuggling that impede the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid,” he said.

“Children are dying of malnutrition and dehydration, while food and clean water wait in trucks,” he lamented.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since then has killed at least 37,626 people, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories — Teenagers across the Gaza Strip should have been taking their final exams this month, a last hurdle before university and lifelong dreams, but the war in the Palestinian territory has crushed those hopes.

According to the education ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, 85 per cent of educational facilities in the territory are out of service because of the war.

"I was eagerly awaiting the exams, but the war prevented that and destroyed that joy," said Baraa Al Farra, an 18-year-old student displaced from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

"At first we were waiting in the hope that the war would end and we would catch up," he said.

But "We don't know how long it will last or how many years it will deprive us of our educational lives."

Almost nine months of war in Gaza began with an unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,598 people, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The Education Cluster, a UN-backed organisation, estimated in a report this month that more than 75 per cent of Gaza’s schools would need full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to reopen.

Many have been turned into shelters for Gaza’s displaced and others have been damaged in bombardment.

‘Books not bombs’ 

Liliane Nihad, an 18-year-old displaced to Khan Yunis from Gaza City, in the territory’s north, said she and her fellow students had “been waiting 12 years to take these exams and pass and feel happy and enter university... but we have been deprived of all that by this damned war”.

Nihad said she had been hoping to study English and to get a doctorate, “but all of that has evaporated”.

Displaying their anger at the situation, dozens of students and teachers held a protest in Gaza City’s Al Rimal neighbourhood on Saturday.

“We demand our right to take high school exams” and “We want books, not bombs” they chanted, while empty chairs were laid out to symbolise those students killed in the war.

Mediation has failed to bring an end to the fighting, leaving Gaza’s young people with deep uncertainty about their futures.

Farra said he wanted to get out of the territory to achieve his dreams.

“I hope that the crossing will be opened so that I can travel in order to complete my education and not waste my years because I am young and want to achieve my ambitions.”

For now, he faces the harsh realities of life under siege.

“I wish I could experience the fatigue of staying up late studying now and not the fatigue of queueing for sweet and salty water” in the territory where clean water is scarce, like many other essentials.

‘Psychologically exhausted’

Pupils in the Israeli-occupied West Bank will take the exams, as will those Gazans who managed to escape to neighbouring Egypt.

Even for these pupils, however, the war has been hugely disruptive.

“We are psychologically exhausted and not well prepared,” said Muhammad Osama, a student from Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, after completing his religious studies exam in Cairo.

In the West Bank, violence has further escalated since the start of the Gaza war. According to the Palestinian official news agency Wafa, 20 high school students are among the hundreds of Palestinians killed there.

Wafa reported that 89,000 students from Gaza and the West Bank had been expected to take high school exams this year.

Back in Gaza, however, there will be no exams at all.

The UN, citing the Palestinian ministry of education, said about 39,000 high school students in Gaza are unable to take their tests.

Sulaf Mousa, an 18-year-old from Al Shati Camp west of Gaza City, hit by a deadly air strike on Saturday, said he had hoped to study medicine and become a doctor.

“Now, we hope we will survive the war and not lose more than we have already lost,” Mousa said.