Region

DOHA — Top US diplomat Antony Blinken said on Wednesday an elusive truce and hostage release deal to end the Gaza war was still possible, wrapping up a Middle East tour as deadly fighting rocked the Palestinian territory.

Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hizbollah, a Hamas ally, rained rockets on northern Israel, a day after an Israeli strike killed one of its senior commanders.

Secretary of State Blinken, in Doha for the last stop of a tour to promote President Joe Biden's Gaza ceasefire roadmap, said the United States would work with regional partners to "close the deal".

Hamas late Tuesday submitted its response to mediators Qatar and Egypt, and Blinken said some of the proposed amendments "are workable and some are not".

A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, said it sought "a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal" of Israeli troops from Gaza, demands rejected by Israel.

The three-stage plan — endorsed by the UN Security Council and Arab powers — includes a six-week ceasefire, a hostage-prisoner exchange and Gaza's internationally backed reconstruction.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said "many" of Hamas's demands were "minor and not unanticipated", while "others differ more substantively from what was outlined in the UN Security Council resolution".

Blinken said Israel was behind the plan, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has far-right members strongly opposed to the deal, has yet to formally endorse it.

Netanyahu's office said he was convening a "security assessment" on Wednesday "in light of the developments in the north and Hamas's negative response on the issue of the hostage release".

The top US diplomat expressed hopes that gaps could be closed.

“We have to see... over the course of the coming days whether those gaps are bridgeable,” said Blinken.

Hizbollah rockets

As the bloody Gaza war rages into its ninth month, deadly violence has intensified along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed a Hezbollah commander described by a Lebanese military source as the Shiite Muslim group’s “most important” fighter killed in near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hizbollah since the Gaza war erupted.

On Wednesday three waves of about 150 rockets and missiles filled the sky over northern Israel, according to the military, reporting fires but no casualties.

Hizbollah also claimed more than 10 other attacks on the Israeli military, including one with drones.

Senior Hizbollah official Hashem Safieddine threatened to “increase the intensity, strength, quantity and quality of our attacks”.

Netanyahu warned last week that the army was “prepared for a very intense operation” to “restore security to the north”.

In Doha, Blinken said “the best way” to help end the Hizbollah-Israel violence was “a resolution of the conflict in Gaza and getting a ceasefire”.

“That will take a tremendous amount of pressure out of the system.”

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’ October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages. Of these 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 of them are dead.

Israel in response launched a military offensive on Gaza that has left at least 37,202 people dead, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.

‘Tired, dead, destroyed’

In central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp, resident Ahmed Al Rubi said he hoped a deal would end the “severe suffering we are going through”.

“I hope for a ceasefire,” he told AFP. “What has happened to us is enough.”

Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Hamas’ response “represents another step towards accepting Israel’s hostage deal proposal”, referring to the Biden plan.

It urged Israel to send negotiators as soon as possible, warning “any delay may jeopardise the possibility of reaching a deal”.

Some Gazans have called on Hamas to do more to secure a deal.

“Hamas does not see that we are tired, we are dead, we are destroyed,” a Gaza man told AFP, giving his name as Abu Shaker.

“What are you waiting for?” he said. “The war must end at any cost. We cannot bear it any longer.”

Israel’s military kept up its bombardment and ground operations inside Gaza, where a witness said there was “aerial and artillery shelling” in the southern city of Rafah.

A child was killed in an Israeli bombardment targeting a Rafah house, a medic at Al Nasser Hospital said. Air strikes and shelling also hit nearby Khan Yunis.

Farther north, the civil defence agency reported at least four dead in a strike on a house in the Zeitun neighbourhood of Gaza City, where a hospital earlier said a pre-dawn raid killed seven people.

‘Starvation’

A UN investigation concluded on Wednesday that Israel has committed crimes against humanity during the Gaza war, including that of “extermination”.

It found both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants and civilians had committed war crimes.

The Commission of Inquiry, established by the UN Human Rights Council, noted “a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Gaza” including “starvation as a method of warfare”.

Israel rejected the conclusions and accused the commission of “discrimination”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the conflict has seen “a unique level of destruction and a unique level of casualties in the Palestinian population during these months of war”.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said more than 8,000 children aged under five have been treated for acute malnutrition in Gaza, where only two stabilisation centres for severely malnourished patients currently operate.

“Despite reports of increased delivery of food, there is currently no evidence that those who need it most are receiving sufficient quantity and quality of food,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

BEIRUT — Lebanese militant group Hizbollah fired barrages of rockets at Israel on Wednesday and vowed to intensify its attacks after an Israeli strike killed a senior commander in south Lebanon the previous day.

Hizbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.

The exchanges have escalated in recent weeks, with Hizbollah stepping up its use of drones to attack Israeli military positions and Israel hitting back with targeted strikes against the fighters.

"We will increase the intensity, strength, quantity and quality of our attacks," said senior Hizbollah official Hashem Safieddine, speaking at the funeral of commander Taleb Sami Abdallah, who was killed in Tuesday's Israeli strike.

In Doha, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken renewed calls Wednesday for a diplomatic solution on the Israel-Lebanon border and said a long-sought Gaza ceasefire deal would "take a tremendous amount of pressure out of the system".

Hizbollah said that in "response to the assassination carried out by the Zionist enemy", it launched six attacks with Katyusha rockets or heavy-duty Burkan missiles at military positions and bases in northern Israel, also striking a "military factory" with guided missiles.

The Iran-backed fighter group in separate statements also claimed more than 10 other attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Wednesday, including one with drones.

The Israeli forces said more than 150 “projectiles” had been fired from Lebanon in three successive barrages.

“Approximately 90 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon,” it said, adding several were intercepted but others struck inside Israel, sparking fires in parts of the north.

The initial barrage was followed by a second of about 70 projectiles and a third of around 10, the military said, adding the army struck several sites in south Lebanon in response.

‘Important’ commander

“Israel Fire and Rescue Services are currently operating to extinguish the fires that broke out as a result of the launches,” the military said.

Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency medical service said there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The Israeli forces on Wednesday confirmed it had “eliminated” Taleb Sami Abdallah in a strike the day before on a Hizbollah command centre in southern Lebanon.

In a statement, it called Abdallah “one of Hizbollah’s most senior commanders in southern Lebanon” and said he “planned, advanced, and carried out a large number of terror attacks against Israeli civilians”.

Abdallah was killed along with three Hezbollah comrades in an Israeli strike on Jouaiyya, 15 kilometres from the border, a source close to the group told AFP.

A Lebanese military source said the commander was “the most important in Hizbollah to be killed... since the start of the war”.

The group had urged its supporters to attend Abdallah’s funeral in the southern suburbs of Beirut, describing him as “one of the knights of the resistance”.

Men wearing military fatigues and black berets carried his coffin, covered in Hizbollah’s yellow flag, as a brass band played for the ceremony.

‘Harsh blow’

Pro-Hizbollah newspaper Al Akhbar described the strike that killed Abdallah as “a harsh blow” to the group.

Britain-based Middle East specialist Amal Saad played down the prospect of wider escalation.

“I don’t think that the death of this highest-ranking commander is going to change any of Hizbollah’s calculations,” she said, adding civilian casualties were “red lines” for the group rather than the targeting of commanders or fighters.

“We witnessed an escalation in quality and quantity of [Hizbollah] attacks in order to put pressure on Israel and the US in the ceasefire talks and improve Hamas’s bargaining position,” Saad said.

On Tuesday, Hizbollah said it fired about 50 rockets at Israeli positions in the annexed Golan Heights.

More than eight months of cross-border violence has killed at least 468 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 89 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 Israeli soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the border since the violence erupted the day after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.

The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 37,202 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

KUWAIT CITY — A fire in Kuwait killed 49 people, all Indian nationals, when it ripped through a building housing nearly 200 foreign workers on Wednesday, the government said.

The blaze, which broke out in the six-storey building south of Kuwait City at around dawn, also left dozens injured, the health ministry said.

Flames engulfed the lower floors as black smoke poured out of the upper-storey windows, unverified images posted on social media showed.

The interior ministry revised the death toll up to 49, from 35 issued earlier, after forensic teams scoured the charred building.

"The number of deaths as a result of the fire in the workers' building... has risen to 49," the ministry said.

The official Kuwait News Agency quoted Health Minister Ahmed Al Awadhi as saying hospitals had received 56 people injured in the fire in the Mangaf area, which is heavily populated with migrant labourers.

The building, whose exterior was blackened with soot, housed 196 workers, according to information given to the interior minister by their employer.

Oil-rich Kuwait has large numbers of foreign workers, many of them from South and Southeast Asia, and mostly working in construction or service industries.

A source in the fire department said the victims suffocated from rising smoke after the fire started at the building’s base.

A foreign ministry statement said later the “tragic” fire had “claimed the lives of 49 citizens of the Indian community residing in the state of Kuwait”.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the disaster “saddening” in a post on social media platform X.

“My thoughts are with all those who have lost their near and dear ones,” wrote Modi, as the Indian embassy in Kuwait set up an emergency helpline for updates.

‘Overcrowding and neglect’

India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh was also on his way to coordinate assistance and repatriate the dead, India’s foreign ministry spokesman said.

India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar posted that he was “deeply shocked by the news” and offered “deepest condolences to the families of those who tragically lost their lives”.

He spokes on the phone with his Kuwaiti counterpart Abdullah Al Yahya who “expressed the condolences of the leadership, government and people of the state of Kuwait”, the foreign ministry statement said.

Yahya also “called for a speedy recovery for those injured as a result of this painful disaster” and said Kuwaiti authorities were “harnessing all their capabilities” to assist them, it added.

Interior Minister Sheikh Fahd Al Yousef said the building’s owner had been detained for potential negligence, adding any properties violating safety regulations would be closed immediately.

“We will work to address the issue of labour overcrowding and neglect,” he said. “We will detain the owner of the property where the fire broke out until legal procedures are completed.”

The blaze is one of the worst seen in Kuwait, which borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and sits on about 7percent of the world’s oil reserves.

PORT SUDAN, Sudan — The last operating hospital in western Sudan’s Al Fasher has been closed after an attack by paramilitaries trying to seize the key Darfur city, medical charity Doctors Without Borders has said.

War has raged for more than a year between the regular military under army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

Al Fasher in North Darfur is the only state capital in the vast western region not under RSF control, and is a key humanitarian hub for a region on the brink of famine.

“On Saturday, MSF and the ministry of health suspended all activities in South Hospital, Al Fasher, North Darfur, after RSF soldiers stormed the facility, opened fire and looted it, including stealing an MSF ambulance,” said the NGO in a statement posted late Sunday on X.

El-Fasher has seen sporadic clashes since the war broke out in April 2023, but fierce fighting reignited on May 10 in what UN chief Antonio Guterres has called “an alarming new chapter” in the conflict.

Since then, “at least 192 people have been killed and more than 1,230 wounded” in the city, according to a conservative estimate by the medical charity.

MSF said that “intensified fighting” around the hospital earlier this week had triggered its evacuation, and by the time of the paramilitary attack “there were only 10 patients and a reduced medical team” there.

“Most patients and the remaining medical team... were able to flee the RSF shooting,” MSF added.

It noted that “due to the chaos, our team was unable to verify if there were any killed or wounded” in the latest attack.

Michel-Olivier Lacharite, head of emergencies at MSF, said it was “outrageous that the RSF opened fire inside the hospital”.

“Warring parties must halt attacks on medical care,” he added. “Hospitals are closing. Remaining facilities can’t handle mass casualties.”

The war across Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people, including up to 15,000 in a single West Darfur town, UN experts say.

Nearly nine million people have been forced from their homes.

Both warring sides have been accused of war crimes including deliberately targeting civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and blocking humanitarian aid.

Rights groups and the United States have also accused the paramilitaries of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

CAIRO — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in Cairo on Monday at the start of a regional tour to push for a much awaited Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

In closed-door talks also attended by Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, Sisi and Blinken discussed “joint efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange” deal, according to a statement from the presidency.

Egypt, the first Arab state to recognise Israel and sign a peace treaty with it in 1979, has along with the US and Qatar been engaged in mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel that have repeatedly floundered.

Speaking to reporters before leaving Cairo for his next stop in Jerusalem, Blinken said he had a “very good exchange” with Sisi, adding that regional leaders should “press Hamas” to agree to the truce proposal.

The two had also been expected to discuss plans to reopen the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, a key conduit for aid into the besieged territory which has been closed for a month since Israeli troops seized its Palestinian side.

“Deal or no deal, it remains absolutely essential that we get more aid to Palestinians who need it,” Blinken told reporters.

The top US diplomat’s eighth visit to the region since war broke out in early October is intended to gather support for a ceasefire proposal announced on May 31 by US President Joe Biden.

Except for a one-week truce in November — which saw some 100 hostages freed, most of them in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails — negotiations have failed to halt the fighting.

‘Press Hamas’ 

Under the latest proposal, Israel would withdraw from Gaza population centres and Hamas would free hostages as fighting halts for an initial six weeks, with the truce extended as negotiators seek a permanent end to hostilities.

Hamas has not formally responded to the plan.

Blinken said on Monday his message to regional governments was that “if you want a ceasefire, press Hamas to say yes” to the proposal.

Biden has described the plan as an Israeli initiative, but prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to push on with the war until Israel achieves all of its goals, including the annihilation of Hamas as a military and political force.

Blinken’s next stop is Jerusalem later on Monday, where he is set to meet Netanyahu, as well as Benny Gantz — a centrist politician who on Sunday resigned from the war cabinet over the premier’s handling of the war.

Blinken will then head to Jordan and Qatar for further talks.

The war broke out after the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 37,124 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

NUSEIRAT, Palestinian Territories — A day after Israeli special forces rescued four hostages from Gaza, Palestinians recounted their panic during the intense gun battles and explosions that rocked the area and reduced buildings to rubble.

While Israelis have rejoiced at the safe return of the four captives, officials in Hamas-run Gaza decried a “massacre” in which they said 274 people were killed and 698 wounded in the crowded Nuseirat refugee camp.

Soon after the raid started around 11 am (8:00 GMT) in Nuseirat’s busy market area, bombs were raining down and turning the neighbourhood into “smoke and flames”, said Muhannad Thabet, a 35-year-old resident.

“People were screaming — young and old, women and men,” he said by phone. “Everyone wanted to flee the place, but the bombing was intense and anyone who moved was at risk of being killed due to the heavy bombardment and gunfire.

“Houses were destroyed with their occupants inside. There were also large numbers of displaced people and shops, stalls and cars were on fire due to the bombing.”

Israel had sent in a special forces team of troops, police and Shin Bet operatives who simultaneously raided two buildings to extract the hostages — Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41.

They met little resistance in one, but heavy gunfire in the other and withdrew under attack with guns and rocket-propelled grenades to take the hostages to nearby helicopters, said military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.

Another military spokesman, Peter Lerner, told US network ABC that “the forces came under fire from a 360-degree threat — RPGs, AK-47s, explosive devices, mortar rounds. It was ... a war zone”.

‘No one could move’ 

Eyewitnesses said the Israeli raid and retreat were covered by heavy air strikes as well as drone and tank fire.

Several told AFP they had seen bodies in the streets, which AFP could not independently verify.

As the fighting raged, the injured were taken to one of Gaza’s hospitals, medics said.

“The hospital was filled with martyrs and injured, and it was impossible to accommodate such a large number within minutes,” said doctor Marwan Abu Nasser, an official at the Al Awda health facility near the camp.

“Of course, the hospital was under fire, and no one could move during the operation.”

Watching from his roof, another local man, Mohammed Moussa, said he was terrified when he caught a glimpse of an Israeli tank on the street below with artillery fire crashing down.

“I should be dead,” marvelled the 29-year-old after the battle was over, leaving much of the area covered in debris and heavy dust that coated the streets in grey.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after the October 7 Hamas sudden attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The fighters also took about 251 hostages, of whom 116 hostages now remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 of them are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 37,084 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Troops ‘disguised as Hamas’ 

Several witnesses reported seeing Israeli forces burst out of a refrigerated truck, dressed in the garb of Palestinian militants in an apparent bid to confuse their enemies, although this also could not be independently verified.

Alaa Al Khatib, a displaced woman living in the camp, told AFP she was walking to a market when she saw people climbing out of a refrigerated truck and exiting a small white car.

They then took out a ladder and began climbing into an upper floor of a nearby building, she said.

“Moments later, I heard gunfire and explosions from the houses, neighbourhoods and streets of the camp,” she said.

“I learnt that Israeli special forces had infiltrated the camp with Palestinian aid vehicles, all as a distraction to divert the attention of the people in the camp from the operation they came for, to liberate Israeli hostages.”

Several other witnesses reported similar details to AFP, notably the presence of a refrigerated truck.

“They were wearing clothes like Hamas and Islamic Jihad people, and some were masked,” said another local man, Mahmoud Al Assar, 27.

Recalling the intensity of the battle that soon erupted and devastated several city blocks, Assar said that “what happened in the camp was like an earthquake”.

SANAA — Yemen's Houthi rebels said Sunday they targeted ships off the country's coast with missiles and drones after maritime security firms said two vessels had caught fire after being hit by projectiles.

The strikes are the latest in a flurry of attacks by the Iran-backed rebels who have been harassing ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since November in a campaign they say is in solidarity with Palestinians amid the Gaza war.

In a statement on social media platform X, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the rebels attacked "two ships belonging to companies that violated" directives by the group not to enter Israeli ports.

He identified the vessels as the Liberia-flagged MSC Tavvishi and the Norderney, which sails under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda.

Saree said the rebels also targeted the HMS Diamond, a British naval warship, but there was no confirmation from the United Kingdom.

The Houthi announcement came after maritime security firm Ambrey said an Antigua and Barbuda-flagged cargo ship caught fire after being hit by a missile off Yemen on Saturday night.

“The ship was heading southwest along the Gulf of Aden at a speed of 8.2kts when the forward station was struck by a missile. A fire started but was neutralised,” Ambrey said in a statement.

A second missile was sighted but missed and “small boats in the vicinity opened fire on the ship” causing it to change direction to port.

“No injuries were reported,” the security firm added.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), run by Britain’s Royal Navy, said an “unknown projectile” hit a vessel off Yemen around 2000 GMT on Saturday, starting a small fire in the mooring station that was extinguished.

“All crew are reported safe and the vessel is now proceeding to its next port of call,” it said.

In a separate incident on Saturday night, the UKMTO reported another projectile struck a ship “on the aft section”, resulting in a fire. No casualties were reported.

“Vessels are advised to transit with caution,” it said.

The Houthi attacks have prompted some shipping companies to detour around southern Africa to avoid the Red Sea, a route that normally carries about 12 per cent of global trade.

Since January, the United States and Britain have launched retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the attacks.

The strikes have done little to deter the Huthis, who have vowed to target US and British vessels as well as all ships heading to Israeli ports.