Region

Geneva — Israel's reported ongoing destruction of all buildings along the border inside Gaza with the aim of creating a "buffer zone" is a war crime, the UN rights chief warned on Thursday.

Israel's "extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly, amounts to a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a war crime", Volker Turk said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered troops to prepare to enter Gaza's crowded southern city of Rafah, even as new talks aimed at securing a truce with Hamas were set to open Thursday in Cairo.

Netanyahu announced the order after rejecting Hamas's response to a ceasefire proposal at the centre of recent intensive diplomatic efforts, dismissing what he called the militant group's "bizarre demands".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Israel as part of his fifth Middle East crisis tour since the October 7 surprise attack, insisted he still saw "space for agreement to be reached" to halt the fighting and bring home hostages.

Heavy fighting raged on unabated, with more air strikes hitting Hamas-ruled Gaza, now in its fifth month of war, where the health ministry said another 109 people were killed overnight.

Alarm has mounted especially for the more than one million Palestinians crowded into Gaza's far south as the battlefront has crept ever closer to the city of Rafah on the Egyptian border.

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned on Wednesday that an Israeli military push into the city "would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare".

Netanyahu, in televised remarks Wednesday, said he had ordered troops to "prepare to operate" in Rafah and predicted that coming months would bring "total victory".

Regarding the ceasefire proposal, he added: “Giving in to the bizarre demands of Hamas that we have just heard will... only invite another massacre.”

Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv that Hamas’s counter-proposal had at least offered an opportunity “to pursue negotiations”.

“While there are some clear non-starters in Hamas’s response, we do think it creates space for agreement to be reached, and we will work at that relentlessly until we get there,” Blinken said, hours after meeting Netanyahu.

He later met with moderates in Netanyahu’s war Cabinet, including Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, for talks on “the hostages and the strong desire that we both have to see them returned to their families”, and also held talks with Israel’s main opposition leader Yair Lapid.

Cairo talks 

A new round of negotiations was set to open Thursday in Cairo, aimed at achieving “calm” in Gaza and a prisoner-hostage exchange, an Egyptian official said.

Egypt was urging “both parties to show the necessary flexibility” to make a deal, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hamas said a delegation led by Khalil Al Hayya, a leading member of the group’s political bureau, was travelling to Cairo on Thursday.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented surprise attack on Israel on October 7. Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas and launched air strikes and a ground offensive that have killed at least 27,840 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Hamas fighters seized around 250 hostages on October 7. Israel says 132 remain in Gaza, of whom 29 are believed to have died.

The fate of the hostages has gripped Israeli society, and while Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted military pressure is the only way to bring them home, he has faced mounting calls to strike a deal.

Addressing the prime minister, one of the hostages released as part of a temporary truce in November, Adina Moshe, told a press conference in Tel Aviv: “Everything is in your hands.”

“And I’m very afraid and very concerned that if you continue with this line of destroying Hamas, there won’t be any hostages left to release.”

 ‘Abysmal conditions’

As Israel prepared to press further south, fears have grown for the displaced Palestinian civilians thronging Rafah, pressed against Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

More than half of Gaza’s 2.4 million people are estimated to have sought safety in the city, according to the United Nations.

“Their living conditions are abysmal,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said. “They lack the basic necessities to survive, stalked by hunger, disease and death.

“As the war encroaches further into Rafah, I am extremely concerned about the safety and well-being of families which have endured the unthinkable in search of safety.”

Blinken stopped short of calling on Israel not to move on the city, but did voice concern. Any “military operation that Israel undertakes needs to put civilians first and foremost”, he said.

BAGHDAD — Iraq on Thursday condemned a US air strike that killed a senior commander from a pro-Iran armed group accused of having been involved in attacks on American troops in the region.

The US attack on Wednesday came after a wave of strikes on Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria last week following the killing of three American troops in Jordan's north-eastern borders with Syria on January 28.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the commander killed on Wednesday was targeted "in response to the attacks on US service members".

The strike killed "a Kataeb Hizbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on US forces in the region," according to CENTCOM.

"The United States will continue to take necessary action to protect our people. We will not hesitate to hold responsible all those who threaten our forces' safety," it added.

Iraqi authorities slammed the strike as a “blatant assassination” in a residential neighbourhood of Baghdad.

“The international coalition is completely overstepping the reasons and objectives for which it is present on our territory,” said Yehia Rasool, the military spokesman for Iraq’s prime minister.

“This path pushes the Iraqi government more than ever before to end the coalition’s mission which has become a factor of instability for Iraq,” he added.

He was referring to the US-led international military alliance formed in 2014 to fight the Daesh terror group, the year the extremist group overran nearly a third of Iraq’s territory.

Kataeb Hizbollah, which announced it was suspending its attacks on US forces after the deadly Jordan attack, said one of its commanders had been killed, identifying him as Abu Baqr Al Saadi. He was responsible for “military affairs” in Syria, an official from the group told AFP.

The Hashed Al Shaabi, a coalition of mainly pro-Iran paramilitaries, of which Kataeb Hizbollah is part, now integrated into Iraq’s regular security forces, also confirmed Saadi’s death.

An interior ministry official said a total of three people, two Kataeb Hizbollah leaders and their driver, had died in the strike, which was carried out by a drone in the east Baghdad neighbourhood of Mashtal.

‘Red lines’ 

The latest US strike sparked widespread condemnation in Iraq, with a pro-Iran parliamentary coalition dubbing it an attack on “Iraqi sovereignty”.

Washington has “crossed all red lines by targeting regular forces and men who contributed to defeating Islamic State terrorism”, said the Coordination Framework, an alliance of pro-Iran Shiite parties that includes the Hashed Al Shaabi.

Iraq’s pro-Iran Al Nujaba movement in a statement promised a “targeted retaliation”, assuring that “these crimes will not go unpunished”.

The group added that American “violations” will not cease without “a firm official position from the Iraqi government”.

US and allied troops have been targeted more than 165 times in the Middle East since mid-October in attacks linked to a surge in violence over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The majority of the attacks have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-backed groups angered by US support for Israel in the war in Gaza.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hizbollah group said “resistance movements in the region have total confidence” in their Iraqi counterparts and the commander’s killing will only encourage them to continue acts they say are in support of Palestinians.

The United States considers Kataeb Hizbollah a terrorist group.

‘Playing with fire’ 

The Hashed Al Shaabi has said that 16 of its fighters were killed and 36 people wounded in US strikes on Friday, which Washington said hit 85 targets at seven different sites in Iraq and Syria.

“Targeting the Hashed Al Shaabi is playing with fire,” the group’s leader Faleh al-Fayyad warned later.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said at least 29 pro-Iran fighters were killed in Syria.

Iraq analyst Sajad Jiyad, of the New York-based Century Foundation think tank, said he expected the tensions to continue to spiral.

“These groups have a lot of capabilities, they are active in several countries now, the US is willing to engage, to retaliate, to kill members of these groups,” he said.

“The US is giving no indication it is going to pull back or stand down its military activity in the Middle East,” he said, adding “it is very difficult to suddenly see an end to the tensions”.

The United States and Iraq opened talks on the future of the US-led troop presence in January, following a request by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani for a timetable for their withdrawal.

Washington has some 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq as part of an international coalition against DaeshIts troops in Iraq are deployed at the invitation of Baghdad, but those in Syria are located in areas outside Syrian government control.

GENEVA — The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $4.1 billion to provide desperately needed aid to civilians in war-ravaged Sudan and those who have fled as refugees, warning the conflict had fuelled “epic suffering”.

The brutal conflict that erupted in April last year has caused a humanitarian collapse and left over half of the country’s population — around 25 million people — in need of assistance and protection.

“Ten months of conflict have robbed the people of Sudan of nearly everything — their safety, their homes and their livelihoods,” United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement. 

The war between Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has killed thousands, including between 10,000 and 15,000 in a single city in the western Darfur region, according to UN experts.

And the expanding fighting in Sudan has sparked rampant hunger with nearly 18 million people facing acute food insecurity.

The intense hostilities are meanwhile continuing to damage water supply networks and other critical civilian infrastructure, and left nearly three quarters of health facilities in conflict-affected states out of service. 

At the same time, diseases like cholera, measles and malaria are spreading fast.

This coupled with soaring malnutrition rates has created a situation where at least one child dies every two hours in the sprawling Zamzam camp for displaced people in the western Darfur region, the Doctors Without Borders charity warned this week.

Amid widespread reports of gender-based violence, the war has also created one of the world’s largest protection and displacement crises.

Nearly eight million people have fled their homes, including more than 1.5 million who have crossed into neighbouring countries, according to UN figures. 

The UN and its partners said they needed $2.7 billion this year to reach 14.7 million people with desperately-needed aid inside the country.

“The generosity of donors helps us provide food and nutrition, shelter, clean water, and education for children, and to fight the scourge of gender-based violence and care for the survivors,” Griffiths said. 

“But last year’s appeal was less than half funded. This year, we must do better and with a heightened sense of urgency.”

The UN refugee agency UNHCR meanwhile said it needs another $1.4 billion to help nearly 2.7 million people — refugees and members of their host communities — across five of Sudan’s neighbouring countries.

BEIRUT — France's top diplomat warned officials during a Beirut visit on Tuesday that Israel is threatening to wage war on its northern neighbour to return citizens displaced by cross-border fire, Lebanon's foreign minister said.

Hamas ally Hizbollah and Israel have been exchanging daily fire for nearly four months in the wake of the Gaza war, forcing tens of thousands of people out of their homes on both sides of the border.

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne "warned us that the Israelis might launch a war, which they say would be to return" displaced citizens to their homes, Abdallah Bou Habib told reporters after meeting his French counterpart.

"We told the French that we do not want a war" with Israel, Bou Habib said, adding that Beirut sought "a border deal with them" facilitated by the United Nations, France and the United States.

Sejourne met caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, army chief Joseph Aoun and parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hizbollah ally, as part of his first regional tour since taking office.

In Jerusalem on Monday, Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz told Sejourne that "time is running out" to reach a diplomatic solution in south Lebanon.

Sejourne is the latest in a succession of Western ministers to visit Beirut amid concerns the Gaza war could spark a wider conflict involving Iranian allies around the Middle East.

A major focus of recent diplomatic efforts has been to reinforce a UN Security Council resolution that ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah.

Resolution 1701 called for all armed personnel to pull back north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometres from the border with Israel, except for Lebanese state security forces and UN peacekeepers.

While Hizbollah has not had a visible military presence in the border area since 2006, the group still holds sway over large parts of the south, where it has built tunnels, hideouts and launched attacks into Israel.

Asked about Lebanon’s demands, Bou Habib said: “Help us recruit about 6,000 to 7,000” soldiers “so they can be deployed in the south”, denying that the move aimed to comply with Israeli calls for Hizbollah’s withdrawal from the border region.

“We really want total peace and for Israel to completely withdraw from all Lebanese land,” he added, in reference to disputed border areas.

Bou Habib is set to meet his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry on Wednesday.

At least 226 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly Hizbollah fighters but also at least 26 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

BEIRUT — The United Nations and rights groups called for increased aid for Syria on Tuesday, one year after a devastating earthquake struck Turkey and the war-torn country, battering its impoverished population.

"Billions of dollars in damage aside, the human toll of this disaster is incalculable. Many people remain displaced to date, waiting for solutions and shelter," two senior UN officials said in a joint statement.

Syria was already reeling from an economic crisis, but "the earthquakes exacerbated the situation further yet", said UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, Adam Abdelmoula, and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis, Muhannad Hadi.

On February 6, 2023, a pre-dawn 7.8-magnitude tremor killed nearly 60,000 people in Turkey and Syria.

According to Damascus, the earthquake killed more than 1,400 people in government-controlled areas of Syria, while more than 4,500 died in areas held by opposition factions in the country's northwest.

"Today, a staggering 16.7 million people require humanitarian assistance. This shocking number comes against the background of a bleak funding outlook and conflicts raging across the globe," the UN officials said.

"This trend must urgently be reversed," they said.

“Our 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan was just over 36 per cent resourced by the year’s end,” they said, pleading for more funds.

The earthquake also damaged medical facilities, especially in the country’s northwest.

“Even before last February, the healthcare system in northwest Syria was struggling, with underfunded medical facilities and limited services,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement.

The earthquake damaged 55 health facilities, leaving them unable to function fully, MSF added.

More than 265,000 people in northwest Syria lost their homes in the quake and 43,000 have yet to return to their houses, with most of them languishing in shelters, according to UN data.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) decried the country’s “catastrophic humanitarian needs” warning that Syria risked “being a forgotten crisis”.

In 2023, the IRC’s Syria aid programme recorded a “62 per cent funding shortfall, and the situation is anticipated to worsen with further aid reductions expected throughout 2024”, IRC added.

“We are urging the international community not to forget about Syria,” said Tanya Evans of the IRC.

Since 2011, Syria has endured a bloody conflict that has killed more than half-a-million people and displaced millions.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Tuesday it handed its response on a truce deal aimed at halting the war with Israel to key mediators.

"A short while ago, the Hamas movement delivered its response to the framework agreement to the brothers in Qatar and Egypt," a statement said, referring to "a comprehensive and full ceasefire".

The militant group has for more than a week mulled the deal drawn up in its absence at Paris talks, as international pressure mounts to end the four-month war.

Hamas said the proposal was aimed at "ending the aggression against our people, securing relief and shelter, reconstruction, lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip, and completing the process of a prisoner exchange".

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Doha had received a "positive" response from Hamas to the truce plans.

The premier was speaking alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has embarked on another crisis tour of the Middle East.

Blinken said the Hamas response has already “been shared with the Israelis”.

“I’ll pick up that conversation tomorrow in Israel when I’m there and we will be working as hard as we possibly can to try to get an agreement,” Blinken told reporters in Doha.

The Gaza war erupted on October 7 with a sudden attack by Hamas fighters. 

Israel’s withering military campaign has killed at least 27,585 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Meanwhile, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli forces on Tuesday killed six Palestinian police officers, who witnesses told AFP had been securing the passage of an aid truck.

“Six Palestinian police officers killed as a result of the Israeli occupation targeting their vehicle in the Khirbat Al Adas neighbourhood in Rafah,” a ministry statement said.

Witnesses said the officers had been securing the passage of a flour truck when Israeli aircraft hit their car, ripping the passengers to pieces.

An AFP photographer at the scene saw blood sprayed across part of the crushed vehicle, bearing a police emblem on the hood.

First responders covered a body with blankets and loaded it into a damaged ambulance.

The Israeli forces did not immediately comment on the strike when contacted by AFP.

Palestinian police officers have been brought in to secure aid convoys travelling through Gaza, where desperate residents have clambered aboard trucks in search of vital supplies.

There have been repeated strikes on vehicles and buildings in Rafah, which is crammed with more than half of Gaza’s population.