Region

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Israel and Hamas on Monday both angrily rejected moves to arrest their leaders for war crimes made before an international court as heavy fighting raged on in the Gaza Strip.

The International Criminal Court's (ICC's) Prosecutor Karim Khan said he had applied for arrest warrants against top Israeli and Hamas leaders over the bloody conflict.

Israel slammed as a "historical disgrace" the demand targeting prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant, while the Palestinian militant group Hamas said it "strongly condemns" the move.

Khan said in a statement that he was seeking warrants against the Israeli leaders for crimes including "wilful killing", "extermination and/or murder" and "starvation".

In the war started by Hamas's October 7 surprise attack, he said, Israel had committed "crimes against humanity" as part "of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population".

He also said that the leaders of Hamas, including Qatar-based Ismail Haniyeh and Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, "bear criminal responsibility" for actions committed during the October 7 surprise attack.

"International law and the laws of armed conflict apply to all," he added. "No foot soldier, no commander, no civilian leader — no one — can act with impunity."

If granted by the ICC judges, the warrants would mean that technically any of the 124 ICC member states would be obliged to arrest Netanyahu and the others if they travelled there, but the court has no mechanism to enforce its warrants.

Nearly two weeks ago, Israel defied international opposition and sent troops into Rafah, which is crowded with civilians and which the army has described as the last Hamas stronghold.

Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting Hamas in Gaza until the Iran-backed Islamist group is defeated and all remaining hostages are released.

As the heavy fighting has rocked areas of Rafah near the Egyptian border since early May, the UN said more than 810,000 Palestinians have fled the city.

One Palestinian resident, Sarhan Abu al-Saeed, 46, spoke of his desperation: “The question that haunts us is: where will we go? Certain death is chasing us from all directions.”

Witnesses told AFP that Israeli naval forces had also struck Rafah, and medics reported an air strike on a residential building in the city’s west.

The army said Israeli troops were “conducting targeted raids on terrorist infrastructure” in eastern Rafah where they had found “dozens of tunnel shafts”.

Gallant said on Monday he had told visiting US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan of “Israel’s duty to expand the ground operation in Rafah, to dismantle Hamas and to return the hostages”.

‘On verge of collapse’

The war broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Hamas also took about 250 hostages during the attack, of whom 124 remain held in Gaza including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,562 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Israel has imposed a siege on the long-blockaded Gaza Strip, depriving its 2.4 million people of normal access to clean water, food, medicines and fuel.

The suffering has been eased only by sporadic aid shipments by land, air and sea, but truck arrivals have slowed to a trickle amid the Rafah operation.

The European Union warned that 31 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are no longer functioning and that the rest are “on the verge of collapse, with more than 9,000 severely injured people at risk of dying”.

Israeli forces have also been engaged in intense fighting in northern and central areas previously declared largely cleared of militants.

Israeli warplanes carried out overnight strikes on Gaza City’s centre and the southern neighbourhoods, as well as on Al Bureij camp and Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, said AFP correspondent, Palestinian medics and witnesses.

Sullivan met with Netanyahu on Sunday and told him Israel must link the military operation against Hamas with a “political strategy” for Gaza’s future.

Washington has pushed for a post-war plan for Gaza involving Palestinians and supported by regional powers, as well as for a broader diplomatic deal under which Israel and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia would normalise relations.

Israel’s centrist politician Benny Gantz has threatened to quit the governing hard-right coalition if Netanyahu does not approve a post-war “action plan” for Gaza by June 8.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel on Monday slammed as a "historical disgrace" an application by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The Attorney General in the same breath mentions the prime minister and the minister of defence of the State of Israel … a historical disgrace that will be remembered forever," said Israel's foreign minister Israel Katz.

Hamas also condemned the bid by ICC prosecutor for arrest warrants for the group's top leaders including Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — An Israeli strike killed 31 people in central Gaza on Sunday, the Palestinian territory's civil defence agency said, as US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited for talks on the conflict.

Israeli troops have moved in on the Gaza Strip's far-southern city of Rafah, which the army describes as the last Hamas stronghold and where the United States says 800,000 civilians have been newly displaced by the fighting.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, said it was targeting Israeli forces stationed at Rafah crossing — a vital conduit for humanitarian aid that is now closed — with mortar shells.

Israel has also fought and bombed resurgent Hamas forces in northern and central areas of the coastal territory previously considered to be under army control, sparking US warnings that it could become mired in a lengthy counterinsurgency campaign.

In the latest aerial bombardment overnight, Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli strike killed 31 people and wounded 20 in a home in the central Nuseirat refugee camp.

Israel's military, which on Sunday reported its aircraft had "struck dozens of terror targets" over the past 24 hours, said it was checking the reports.

Witness Yasser Abu Oula told AFP an entire residential complex "was destroyed" and "there are still bodies under the rubble".

Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting Hamas in Gaza, following its October 7 surprise attack that sparked the war, until the resistance group is defeated and all remaining hostages are released.

But he has faced intense opposition and calls to announce a plan for Gaza's post-war governance — from top ally Washington and from mass street protests, and now also from members of his war cabinet.

Centrist politician Benny Gantz threatened Saturday to quit the governing hard-right coalition unless Netanyahu approves a post-war “action plan” by June 8.

Amid the political turmoil, Sullivan was to meet his Israeli counterpart Tzachi Hanegbi and Netanyahu for talks on the brutal Gaza conflict and post-war scenarios, after earlier meeting Saudi de facto ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the kingdom.

‘Day after’ scenarios

Gantz demanded steps to defeat Hamas, to bring home the hostages, and towards the formation of an “American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that will manage civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip”.

Netanyahu dismissed Gantz’s comments as “washed-up words”, saying they would lead to “a defeat for Israel” and “the establishment of a Palestinian state”, which he fiercely opposes.

Washington has pushed for a post-war plan for Gaza involving Palestinians and supported by regional powers, as well as for a broader diplomatic deal under which Israel and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia would normalise relations.

US President Joe Biden called Sunday for an immediate gaza ceasefire and said he was pushing for a regional peace deal “to get a two-state solution, the only solution.

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Hamas also took about 250 hostages during the October 7 attack, of whom 124 remain held in Gaza including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,456 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

In central Israel on Sunday, mourners gathered for the funeral of German-Israeli Shani Louk, 22, whose body was recovered Thursday from Gaza by troops who also took back three other dead hostages.

Louk was identified shortly after the October 7 attack in online videos showing a woman lying face down in the back of a pick-up truck filled with armed men, before being announced dead later that month.

‘Nothing but suffering’

Israel has imposed a siege on the long-blockaded Gaza Strip, depriving its 2.4 million people of normal access to clean water, food, medicines and fuel, the suffering eased only by sporadic aid shipments by land, air and sea.

“We are living through a humanitarian catastrophe in every sense of the word,” said Rafah resident Rinad Joudeh, 41, decrying “destruction, fear and terror” nearly two weeks into the Israeli incursion into the city.

The head of the UN agency helping Palestinians said that “despite all the calls by the international community not to launch an offensive in Rafah, in reality an offensive started on May 6”.

Since then, “we have again about half of the population of Gaza being on the road forced to flee” for safety once more, though “we keep saying there is absolutely nowhere to go,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Amman.

“There is absolutely no safe place in the Gaza Strip,” he added.

Joudeh said people heading for a declared “humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi were “walking into hell”.

“There is nothing there but suffering, problems and hardship.”

Lazzarini said that because of the fighting, “almost nothing in terms of aid is crossing” into Gaza, raising fears that recent gains made “to prevent a looming famine ... might quickly be reversed”.

Truck arrivals have slowed with the Rafah crossing with Egypt closed since Israel launched its operation in the city.

Aid has begun entering via a temporary US-built floating pier, where shipments sent from Cyprus are offloaded for distribution.

The United Arab Emirates said Sunday a shipment of “252 tonnes of humanitarian relief supplies for the people of Gaza was successfully unloaded” after sailing from the Cypriot port of Larnaca.

The UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned that if dire fuel shortages are not alleviated, the “famine which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming anymore. It will be present”.

“Our worry ... is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard,” he told AFP in Qatar. “Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic”.

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Heavy clashes and bombardment rocked the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Saturday, as the United Nations said 800,000 people had been "forced to flee" an Israeli assault on Hamas fighters.

Israel's military said its air forces hit more than 70 targets across Gaza while ground troops conducted "targeted raids" in eastern Rafah, killing 50 fighters and locating dozens of tunnel shafts.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, said that since Israel's Rafah operation began, there had been a massive movement of people.

"Nearly half of the population of Rafah or 800,000 people are on the road having been forced to flee since the Israeli forces started the military operation in the area on 6 May," he said in a post on X.

He said people were fleeing to areas without water supplies or adequate sanitation.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, said it fired a barrage of rockets towards Israel's port of Ashkelon and targeted an Israeli command centre at the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

An AFP reporter said air strikes and artillery pounded eastern Rafah as warplanes overflew the city on Gaza's border with Egypt.

More than 10 days into what the army called a "limited" operation in Rafah that sparked an exodus of Palestinians, fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters has also flared again in northern Gaza.

Israel said in early January it had dismantled Hamas's command structure in the north, but the army said Hamas — whose October 7 surprise attack sparked the war — had been "in complete control here in Jabalia until we arrived a few days ago".

Hamas slammed what it called Israel's "escalating crimes of the occupation" and "intensified brutal raids" on Jabalia, saying they had killed dozens of civilians and wounded hundreds more.

Aid groups say Israel’s Rafah incursion, launched despite overwhelming international opposition and as mediators were hoping for a breakthrough in stalled truce talks, has worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis.

With key land crossings closed or operating at limited capacity because of the fighting, some aid began entering Gaza via a temporary US-built floating pier.

The Israeli army said 310 pallets began moving ashore in “the first entry of humanitarian aid through the floating pier”.

Satellite pictures showed more than a dozen trucks lining up Saturday on the pier’s approach road.

In the coming days, around 500 tonnes of aid are expected to be delivered to Gaza via the pier, according to US Central Command.

But UN agencies and humanitarian aid groups have warned sea or air deliveries cannot replace far more efficient truck convoys into Gaza, where the UN has repeatedly warned of looming famine.

The European Union welcomed the first shipment from Cyprus to the pier, but called on Israel to “expand deliveries by land and to immediately open additional crossings”.

The Rafah crossing, a vital conduit for humanitarian aid, has been closed since Israel launched its operation in the city.

The war began after Hamas unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,386 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

The toll includes at least 83 deaths over the past 24 hours, said a ministry statement on Saturday.

Out of 252 people taken hostage from Israel during the October 7 attack, 125 remain held in Gaza including 37 the army says are dead.

‘Advancing and retreating’ 

The army said Saturday that troops had recovered the body of hostage Ron Benjamin in the same Gaza operation that saw the bodies of three other hostages killed on October 7 retrieved late Thursday.

Israel has vowed to defeat remaining Hamas forces in Rafah, which it says is the last bastion of the Iran-backed group.

Palestinian sources in Rafah said Israeli forces were operating in the Al Salam and Jenina neighbourhoods as well as on the Philadelphi route along the Egyptian border.

“Troops are advancing and retreating around these areas,” a security source said.

Cairo, which has been involved in mediation efforts, says a potential Israeli takeover of Philadelphi could violate the two countries’ landmark 1979 peace deal.

In northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, witnesses reported air strikes near Kamal Adwan hospital on Saturday.

Its director Hussam Abu Safiya said Friday the facility had received “large numbers” of casualties from nearby Jabalia and was running low on supplies.

The fuel aid that had reached the hospital was “barely enough for a few days”, he told AFP.

The World Health Organisation has received no medical supplies in Gaza since the Rafah operation began, spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said Friday.

Biden aide visits 

On the diplomatic front, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was heading to the region.

Sullivan will meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman on Saturday and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Meanwhile, Israel said it killed two senior Islamic Jihad militants in separate air strikes in the northern West Bank and in Rafah.

The armed wing of Islamic Jihad confirmed a local commander was killed in an overnight strike on the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp.

PORT SUDAN, Sudan — Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have announced their willingness to open "safe passages" out of the former haven city of El Fasher in Darfur, which has been gripped by fighting for weeks.

The RSF, battling the regular army for more than a year, affirmed in a post on X late Friday "the readiness of its forces to help citizens by opening safe passages to voluntarily leave to other areas of their choosing and to provide protection for them".

El Fasher, the state capital of North Darfur and once a key hub for humanitarian aid where many had gathered for shelter, has been in the grips of fighting as the RSF seeks to control it.

The paramilitaries called on residents of El-Fasher to "avoid conflict areas and areas likely to be targeted by air forces and not to respond to malicious calls to mobilise residents and drag them into the fires of war".

Sudan has been in the throes of conflict for over a year between the regular army led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The conflict has killed as many as 15,000 people in the West Darfur state capital of El Geneina alone, according to United Nations experts.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday said its hospital in North Darfur had received more than 450 people killed in the fighting since May 10, but noted that the actual death toll was likely much higher.

Also on Wednesday, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator said residents of Sudan were “trapped in an inferno of brutal violence” and increasingly at risk of famine due to the rainy season and blocked aid.

Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced since the war broke out in April 2023.

The UN on Friday warned it only had 12 percent of the $2.7 billion it sought in funding for Sudan, warning that “famine is closing in”.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces shot and killed three men during clashes in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials said early Thursday.

Several others were injured during the confrontation between Israeli forces and Palestinian activists in the town of Tulkarm in the northwest of the territory, the Palestinian Authority's health ministry told AFP.

"3 martyrs shot by the occupation forces in Tulkarm," the ministry said.

It identified those killed as Ayman Ahmad Mubarak, 26, Husam Imad Daabas, 22 and Mohammed Yusif Nasrallah, 27.

According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the three men were killed during an Israeli raid on the town shortly after midnight.

Earlier in the day, the health ministry said Israeli forces killed a young man at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Ramallah shortly after the annual march marking what Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe" of 1948.

Thousands marched across the West Bank to commemorate the 76th anniversary of when around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during the war that led to Israel's creation.

This week's anniversary comes against the backdrop of the war raging in Gaza, which has displaced most of the strip's population.

Violence has surged in the West Bank after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 surprise attack on Israel. Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 35,233 people, mostly civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Including the three deaths announced on Thursday, at least 502 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to the Palestinian health ministry's count.

At least 20 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks over the same period, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — US troops on Thursday anchored a long-awaited temporary pier, aimed to boost aid deliveries into war-ravaged Gaza, to a beach in the besieged Palestinian territory, the US military and Israel said.

The US Central Command said the pier was "successfully affixed to the beach in Gaza" at around 7:40am (04:40 GMT), with around 500 tonnes of aid expected to enter the Palestinian territory in the coming days.

"It's a pretty substantial amount, and it's spread out over multiple ships right now," Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy CENTCOM commander, told reporters in Washington.

"The connection of the floating pier in the Gaza Strip was successfully completed," Israel's military said in a statement later on Thursday.

President Joe Biden announced the emergency pier in March to address the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has warned of famine with virtually the entire population displaced by the Israeli military action in response to the October 7 Hamas attack.

Built at a cost of at least $320 million, the project is extraordinary in that such massive humanitarian efforts by the United States are usually in response to actions by hostile countries, not a US ally.

The humanitarian assistance is being screened in Cyprus and loaded by truck. Once on land, it will “move quickly”, being offloaded from the coast into Gaza within hours, Cooper said, adding that “thousands of tonnes of aid are in the pipeline”.

He said that around 1,000 US soldiers and sailors were involved in the operation but that they were only involved in the pier and not in delivery — which will be handled through the UN.

“There will be no US military boots on the ground in Gaza,” he said.

‘Land routes most effective’ 

The United Nations has warned of a looming famine in Gaza, where it says the vast majority of the coastal territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, now in its eighth month.

The bloodiest-ever Gaza war began after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s military retaliation has killed at least 35,272 people, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

The UN has argued that opening up land crossing points and allowing more aid trucks into Gaza is the only way to stem the spiralling humanitarian crisis.

But the primary crossing into Gaza, on the territory’s border with Egypt, has been closed for days after Israel seized it from Hamas last week.

Israeli troops took over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing as the military threatened a wider assault on the southern city, defying warnings from the United States and others over the fate of some 1.4 million civilians who had been sheltering there.

More required 

Cyprus, the Mediterranean island nation that is the departure point for aid on the planned maritime corridor, said US ship James A. Loux left on Wednesday, carrying relief supplies and “technical equipment for the unloading and transportation of the aid to the jetty”.

Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said that “new departures are expected, transporting humanitarian aid including food items, medical supplies, hygiene and temporary shelter”.

Britain, meanwhile, said its contribution of an initial nearly 100 tonnes of “shelter coverage kits” figured in the first shipment.

The pier will begin with facilitating the delivery of around 90 truckloads of international aid into Gaza each day, before volumes are scaled up to 150 truckloads daily, a British statement said late Wednesday, without providing a clear timeline.

The maritime corridor was “not a replacement for aid being delivered through land routes, which remain the quickest and most effective way of getting much-needed aid into Gaza”, the statement said.

“We know that more is required, particularly via land,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in the statement.