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GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Israel struck Gaza targets on Sunday in its war on Hamas as international concern mounted over the spiralling civilian death toll on the third day after the end of a week-long truce.

More than 15,200 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory, according to health ministry in Gaza, in more than eight weeks of fighting that resumed after the ceasefire ended early Friday.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said at least 160 Palestinian deaths were reported in two incidents in northern Gaza on Saturday: the bombing of a six-storey building in Jabaliya refugee camp, and of an entire block in a Gaza City neighbourhood.

Repeated bursts of heavy automatic weapons fire were heard on Sunday over an AFPTV livecam which showed dark smoke rising over northern Gaza.

Gaza's government on Saturday said 240 people had been killed since the truce expired.

"I cannot find words strong enough to express our concern over what we're witnessing," the head of the World Health Organisation(WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Sunday on X, formerly Twitter, demanding a "Ceasefire. NOW".

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, while the group has ruled out more hostage releases until a permanent ceasefire is agreed.

“We have said it from day one: The price to pay for the release of Zionist prisoners will be the release of all our prisoners, after a ceasefire,” Saleh Al Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’s politburo, said on Saturday evening.

Israeli forces, after focusing on northern Gaza in recent weeks, has struck more targets in the territory’s south and issued warnings to Palestinians trapped there to seek what it said would be safe zones.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced “rocket barrages” against multiple Israeli cities and towns including Tel Aviv, and Israel said two of its soldiers had died in combat, the first since the truce ended.

At least seven people were killed in an Israeli bombing early Sunday near Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, the Hamas government said.

 ‘Too many’ 

innocents killed 

Israel’s ally the United States, which provides it with billions of dollars in military aid annually, has intensified calls for the protection of Gaza’s civilians.

“Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters at UN climate talks in Dubai.

In a new estimate, OCHA said around 1.8 million people in Gaza, roughly 75 per cent of the population, had been displaced, many to overcrowded and unsanitary shelters.

Nasser hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis overflowed with both the wounded and the dead.

Jumana Murad said her son Mohammad, 19, was killed as he tried to help women and children out of a tent inside a school.

“A piece of shrapnel hit him in the head,” she told AFP before bursting into tears.

Tedros said a WHO team visited Nasser hospital and found it with 1,000 patients, three times its capacity. Some were being treated on the floor, “screaming in pain”, he said.

Gazans are short of food, water and other essentials, and many homes have been destroyed. 

Call for hostages return 

The truce, brokered by Qatar with support from Egypt and the United States, led to the release of 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

On Saturday office of Israeli occupation’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli negotiators were being withdrawn from Qatar “following the impasse in the negotiations”.

The Israeli forces said 137 hostages were still being held in Gaza.

The occupation’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said on Saturday that more military action was needed to “create the conditions that push Hamas to pay a heavy price, and that is in the release of hostages”.

Israeli hostages released from Gaza talked publicly on Saturday for the first time, urging their government to secure the release of the remaining captives.

“The moral obligation of this government is to bring them home immediately, without hesitation,” said Yocheved Lifschitz, 85, who was freed by Hamas before the truce deal. 

French President Emmanuel Macron appealed for “stepped-up efforts to reach a lasting ceasefire” to free all hostages, allow in more aid and to assure Israel of its security.

He said Israel’s war aim of destroying Hamas needed to be defined more precisely. “What is the total destruction of Hamas, and does anyone think it’s possible? If it is, the war will last 10 years,” Macron said.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday drew on his experience fighting Daesh in urging Israel to protect non-combatants.

“The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians,” he told a forum in California.

Among the targets hit Saturday in Khan Yunis was a Doha-funded housing development.

At almost exactly the same time Israeli negotiators pulled out of the Qatar talks, bombs pounded the modern-looking yellow apartment blocks one by one.

Most Gazans are trapped but an Egyptian border crossing, after a closure on Friday, reopened to enable 880 foreign and dual nationals to cross along with 13 injured people, the UN said.

Aid trucks with food, medical supplies and other essentials also entered, the UN said.

Violence has also escalated in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the number of Palestinians killed by either soldiers or Israeli settlers during the war exceeds the entire toll of around 235 last year in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories — Patients lie on cold, bloodstained floors in hospitals filled to overflowing. Some scream in pain, but others lie silently, deathly white, too weak even to cry out.

Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip have descended into chaos since the resumption of the war between Hamas and Israel.

After eight weeks of war, interrupted only by one seven-day pause that ended on Friday, the doctors are exhausted.

Fuel reserves have almost run dry because of Israel's blockade of the territory, so doctors are forced to choose when and where across their hospitals to run generators.

According to the United Nations, not a single hospital in the territory's north can currently operate on patients.

The most seriously wounded are transferred daily to the south by convoys organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

But even there, the UN says, the 12 remaining hospitals are only "partially functional".

Abdelkarim Abu Warda and his nine-year-old daughter Huda have just arrived at Deir Al Balah hospital aboard one of the ICRC convoys.

On Friday, after the truce ended, an Israeli strike hit their house in the vast Jabalia refugee camp in the north.

Huda was wounded in the head. "She had a brain haemorrhage — she was placed on a ventilator," her father told AFP.

Since then, "she hasn't responded to anything", he says, lifting up the little girl's arms.

"She doesn't answer me anymore," he repeats, sobbing.

It is daybreak and the first prayers for the dead are being performed.

A few dozen men gather in front of white body bags lined up on the ground.

Between two larger bags lies the small shroud of a child, close to his or her parents even in death.

Women in tears crouch down to touch a face or kiss a loved one for one last time before the bodies are carefully loaded into the back of a pickup.

“It’s Adam going... and there is Abdullah,” says one woman, weeping.

At the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, the largest medical facility in southern Gaza, the story is the same.

World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Sunday he was unable to “find words strong enough” to express his concerns about the conditions there.

Members of a WHO team who visited found it packed with 1,000 patients, three times its capacity.

Patients were being treated on the floor “screaming in pain”, with “countless people... seeking shelter, filling every corner”, the WHO chief wrote.

The Hamas government that runs Gaza says the Israeli campaign has killed more than 15,500 people — including 280 medical staff — since it began eight weeks ago.

‘Saw the bomb fall’ 

Israel, which has vowed to eliminate Hamas, says it is now focusing on the southern city of Khan Yunis.

The army drops warning leaflets on neighbourhoods due to be targeted each day, telling residents that a “terrible attack is imminent” and ordering them to leave.

Each day, too, the warnings move closer to the hospital.

With each new explosion that shakes the city, more casualties arrive, often in private cars.

Staff race out with stretchers which are often still stained with blood from the previous patient.

Some bodies arrive unaccompanied, and so cannot even be identified.

In the corridors, families, the wounded and medical staff all jostle together.

Some tend to the patients, sliding a sweater or a T-shirt under the head of an wounded person lying on the hard floor.

Ehab Al Najjar, a man with several family members both alive and dead at the hospital, lets his anger explode.

“I came home and saw the bomb fall on our house. Women, children died. What did they do to deserve this?” he screams.

NABEUL, Tunisia — A drone buzzed back and forth above rows of verdant orange trees planted near Nabeul, eastern Tunisia.

The black unmanned aircraft, equipped with a multi-lens camera and sensors, has been enlisted by Tunisian farmers to help adapt to years of drought and erratic weather patterns caused by climate change.

“The seasons are not like they were before where we knew exactly what to do,” said farmer Yassine Gargouri, noting temperatures now can begin to climb as early as May while in August there have been unusual summer rains. 

He hired start-up RoboCare to scan the trees from the air and assess their hydration levels, soil quality and overall health — to prevent irreversible damage.

The technology “provides us with information on how much water each plant needs, no more, no less”, he said.

The use of modern technologies in agriculture is globally on the rise, including in North Africa where countries rank among the world’s 33 most water-stressed, according to the World Resources Institute.

RoboCare, employing about 10 people, is the only company in Tunisia, according to its 35-year-old founder Imen Hbiri, to use drones to help farmers combat the impacts of climate change and reduce costs, crop losses and water consumption.

“Resorting to modern technologies in the sector of agriculture has become inevitable,” Hbiri told AFP while monitoring the drone’s path on her computer screen.

‘Challenge of tomorrow’

The daughter of farmers, the entrepreneur knows well the limits of existing farming methods.

Now, in just a few clicks, she can access scans that detect signs of illness or malnourishment before they are visible to the naked eye. 

On the screen, fields appear in RGB (red, green, blue) imagery — the greener the plants, the healthier.

Farmers can then use medicine-filled sprinklers mounted to the drones to target the sickly plants with more precision and consequently less expense.

“By relying on this technology, we can save water consumption by up to 30 per cent and reduce about 20 per cent of the cost of fertilisers and medicine, while raising crop production by 30 per cent”, Hbiri explained.

Gargouri, who spends about 80 percent of his budget on fertilisers and other remedies, says this technology is the future. 

“We must adapt to these upheavals,” Gargouri added. “It’s the challenge of tomorrow”.

Tunisia is currently experiencing its eighth year of drought (four of which were consecutive) in recent years, according to its agriculture ministry.

The country’s dams, which are the primary source for drinking water and irrigating crops, are currently only filled to about 22 per cent capacity. 

And about 20 dams, mostly located in the south, have gone completely out of service.

In neighbouring countries, water scarcity is also a major issue.

Licensing hurdles 

Morocco, where agriculture accounts for 13 per cent of the gross domestic product, 14 per cent of exports and 33 per cent of jobs, also suffered its worst drought in four decades in 2022.

Only about three percent of nearly 2 million Moroccan farmers use new technologies in their fields, Loubna El Mansouri, director of the digital centre at Morocco’s agriculture ministry, told AFP. 

A study they conducted found that using drones to water crops could use “less than 20 litres of water to irrigate one hectare compared to nearly 300 litres” used with traditional methods, Mansouri added.

Similarly, Algeria’s agriculture ministry said it was using drones and satellite imagery for mapping “to optimise the use of agricultural land by evaluating its characteristics and suitability for production”, local media reported.

For the use of these technologies to become widespread, however, Hbiri says the law needs to be changed in Tunisia and awareness raised.

Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia ban the use of unmanned drones without a permit, which in the case of commercial uses can take months to be issued.

Hbiri hopes authorities will help start-ups reach more farmers as she estimates “only 10 per cent of farmers in Tunisia depend on this type of technology”.

“We want to focus our work on the use of technology and not spend time and effort on administrative issues and moving between departments and banks, which is slowing our progress,” she said.

DUBAI — The United States led calls at UN climate talks on Saturday for efforts to curb methane emissions but also pushed a deeply controversial drive to boost nuclear energy to curb global warming.

With smoggy skies in Dubai highlighting the challenges facing the world, other pledges are expected at the COP28 conference, including stepping up the deployment of renewable energy.

The use of nuclear power as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels is highly controversial as environmental groups are concerned about safety and the disposal of nuclear waste.

But more than 20 nations ranging from the US to Ghana, Japan and several European countries said in a declaration that it plays a "key role" in the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by mid-century.

They called for the tripling of nuclear energy capacity by 2050 from 2020 levels.

"We are not making the argument to anybody that this is absolutely going to be a sweeping alternative to every other energy source," US climate Envoy John Kerry said at COP28.

“But we know because [of] the science and the reality of facts... that you can’t get to net zero 2050 without some nuclear”, he said.

The other signatories include Britain, France, South Korea, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. But nuclear powers Russia and China did not sign up.

Environmental group 350.org said the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan highlighted the dangers of atomic power.

“While we appreciate that the Biden administration is looking to invest in alternatives to fossil fuels, we don’t have time to waste on dangerous distractions like nuclear energy,” said its North American Director Jeff Ordower.

Experts point to the fact that nuclear plants can take decades to go into service.

“Nuclear energy takes much longer than renewable energy to be operational,” 350.org added.

Fossil fuel expansion ‘frightening’ 

The declaration came as more than 50 world leaders took the stage at COP28 for the second day in a row, though US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are skipping the talks.

US Vice President Kamala Harris announced a $3 billion contribution to a global fund to help developing countries with the energy transition and the effects of climate change, its first pledge to it since 2014.

“Today, we are demonstrating through action how the world can and must meet this crisis,” Harris said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said energy transition “has to be now”, adding: “We all have to demonstrate the same determination to phase out fossil fuels, beginning with coal.”

Meanwhile Colombia became one of the largest fossil fuel producers to join a group of climate-vulnerable island nations calling to end new development of planet-heating coal, oil and gas.

Colombia said its decision to join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative was an important step in its climate plans. 

Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said it was “frightening” that governments continued to plan to expand their fossil fuel exploitation.

While nations are locked in contentious negotiations on a phase out or phase down of fossil fuels, there is broad backing for the tripling of renewable energy by 2030, an issue that will feature highly on Saturday.

The US and China, the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, will later hold a summit with the UAE on methane emissions, the second driver of global warming after fossil fuels.

“The science must be simple: To turn down the heat, you simply have to turn down the methane,” said Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley.

Washington has announced it will tighten curbs on methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.

The new standards would phase in eliminating routine flaring of natural gas produced by oil wells and require comprehensive monitoring of methane leaks from wells and compression stations.

Methane emissions also come from the agriculture sector, with cows and sheep releasing the gas during digestion and in their manure.

Methane “is the most destructive gas”, Kerry said.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories (AFP) — Israel carried out deadly bombardments in Gaza for a second day on Saturday after a week-long truce with Hamas collapsed despite international calls for an extension.

Clouds of grey smoke from the strikes hung over Gaza, where the health ministry said nearly 200 people had been killed since the pause in hostilities expired early on Friday.

Both sides blamed each other for breaking the truce, with Israel claiming that Hamas had tried to fire a rocket before it ended and failed to produce a list of further hostages for release.

As hostilities resumed, Hamas's armed wing received "the order to resume combat" and to "defend the Gaza Strip", according to a source close to the group who asked not to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

International leaders and humanitarian groups condemned the return to fighting.

"I deeply regret that military operations have started again in Gaza," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on X, formerly Twitter.

Fears of a wider regional conflict grew after the Syrian defence ministry said Israeli strikes had hit Damascus on Saturday and the militant group Hizbollah said one of its members had been killed in an Israeli strike on Lebanon on Friday. The United States said it is working with regional partners to reach another ceasefire.

“We’re going to continue to work with Israel and Egypt and Qatar on efforts to reimplement the pause,” US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in California on Friday.

Israeli forces said on Friday that five of the hostages seized by Hamas had died, and that the group was still holding “136 hostages, including 17 women and children”.

Seven days of hostage-prisoner exchanges had yielded tearful reunions of Israeli families with their released relatives and jubilation in the streets of the occupied West Bank as Palestinian prisoners walked free from Israeli jails.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Dubai that the United States remained “intensely focused on getting everyone home, getting hostages back” and “pursuing the process that had worked for seven days” during the truce.

But Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy told reporters: “Having chosen to hold onto our women, Hamas will now take the mother of all thumpings.”

Israeli forces said that “ground, air and naval forces struck terror targets in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, including in Khan Yunis and Rafah”.

Outside the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza City, a man in a blue sweater bellowed in grief and turned his face and hands to the sky after viewing a dead boy in a body bag, AFPTV footage showed.

“What did he do wrong? God, what did we do to deserve this?” he yelled.

‘Horror movie’ 

Guterres has warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, where the United Nations says 1.7 million people are displaced and short of food, water and other essentials.

“The healthcare service is on its knees,” Rob Holden, a World Health Organisation senior emergency officer, told journalists from Gaza as explosions were heard in the background.

“It is like a horror movie.”

On a bed at Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital, Amal Abu Dagga wept, her beige veil covered in blood.

“I don’t even know what happened to my children,” she said. A relative, Jamil Abu Dagga, told AFP the family had been at home when the bombs started falling.

In Israel, sirens warning of potential missiles sounded in several communities near Gaza. Authorities said they were restarting security measures in the area, including closing schools.

A rocket strike destroyed a van in one Israeli community near Gaza.

 ‘Evacuation zones’ 

Mediation efforts by Qatar and Egypt were ongoing, said a source briefed on the talks who asked not to be named.

During the seven-day truce, Hamas freed 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, and more aid entered Gaza.

Twenty-five other hostages, mostly Thais, were also freed in separate arrangements.

Israeli forces published a map of “evacuation zones” in the Gaza Strip that it said would enable residents to “evacuate from specific places for their safety if required”.

Residents in various areas of Gaza were sent SMS warnings on Friday.

Israeli forces “will begin a crushing military attack on your area of residence with the aim of eliminating the terrorist organisation Hamas”, the warnings said.

“Stay away from all military activity of every kind.”

On Thursday, eight Israeli hostages, some holding dual nationality, were released in the seventh round of exchanges under the truce.

The country’s prison service later said another 30 Palestinian prisoners, 23 minors and seven women, had been freed.

Hamas said it had offered to hand over the bodies of a mother and her two sons, one of them a baby, in talks to extend the now-expired truce.

Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories – Intense fighting erupted once again in Gaza on Friday as a week-long truce expired and Israel resumed its deadly bombardment of suspected Hamas positions in the densely inhabited Palestinian territory.

The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip said 29 people had been killed in the first hours after the pause in hostilities ended at 0500 GMT.

An AFPTV live camera feed showed an explosion and large grey cloud rising over northern Gaza. Israeli forces said its warplanes were "striking" Hamas targets in Gaza, where AFP journalists reported bombings in the north and south.

Combat resumed shortly after Israeli forces said it had intercepted a rocket fired from Gaza, the first from the territory since a missile launched minutes into the start of the truce on November 24.

A source close to Hamas told AFP the group's armed wing had received "the order to resume combat" and to "defend the Gaza Strip", with heavy fighting reported in parts of Gaza City.

In Khan Yunis, a group of men chanted "God is greatest" as they rushed through the streets carrying a body wrapped in a white shroud.

The "war has returned, even more fierce", Anas Abu Dagga, 22, told AFP at a hospital in the city in southern Gaza.

In Israel, sirens warning of potential missiles sounded in several communities near Gaza, and authorities said they were restarting security measures in the area including closing schools.

Qatar, which helped to broker the trace with diplomatic support from the US and Egypt, called for the violence to stop.

Its foreign ministry said the bombing "complicates mediation efforts and exacerbates the humanitarian catastrophe in the Strip" and it urged "the international community to move quickly to stop the violence".

Talks 'ongoing'

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said fighting had restarted after Hamas "violated" the truce.

"The Government of Israel is committed to achieving the goals of the war: Releasing the hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to the residents of Israel," it said.

Despite the resumption of fighting, talks between Qatari and Egyptian mediators were "ongoing", said a source briefed on the talks.

During the seven-day truce Hamas freed 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, and more aid entered Gaza, where about 80 per cent of the population is displaced and short of food and water.

Another 25 hostages, mostly Thais, were also freed outside the scope of the truce agreement.

On Thursday, Washington's top diplomat Antony Blinken, meeting Israeli and Palestinian officials, called for the truce to be extended, and warned any resumption of combat must protect Palestinian civilians.

Other world leaders, and aid groups, had also sought an extended pause in the fighting that began on October 7 when Hamas broke through Gaza's militarised border into Israel.

During the unprecedented attack, Hamas killed about 1,200 people, and kidnapped about 240, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas and unleashed an air and ground military campaign in Gaza that the Hamas government says has killed more than 15,000 people, mostly civilians.

'Coming back'

On Thursday eight more Israeli hostages, some holding dual nationality, were released.

It was fewer than the 10 hostages a day promised under the truce deal. A source close to Hamas said it was counting two Russian-Israeli women released on Wednesday as part of the seventh batch.

The release brought relief for Keren Shem, whose daughter Mia was among those freed. The family released footage showing Keren weeping with joy as she was informed by phone of her daughter's imminent freedom.

"Mia is coming back," she cried out.

Not long after the hostages arrived in Israel, the country's prison service said another 30 Palestinian prisoners, 23 minors and seven women, had been freed.

After meeting leaders in Israel and the occupied West Bank, Blinken said Washington wants "to see this process continue to move forward".

"We want an eighth day and beyond," he said. Blinked left Israel early Friday.

A source close to Hamas said the group backed another extension and mediators were working to prolong the pause, but the negotiations appeared to have failed.

Israel had made clear it viewed the truce as a temporary pause to secure the release of hostages.

"We swore... to eliminate Hamas, and nothing will stop us," Netanyahu said in a video released by his office, after meeting with Blinken.

His government has come under increasing pressure, however, to account for how it will protect civilians in the territory, which is under blockade, with no way for people to escape.

'Protection plans'

Blinken had warned that any resumed military operation by Israel "must put in place humanitarian civilian protection plans that minimise further casualties of innocent Palestinians".

Specifically, Israel must "clearly and precisely" designate areas "in southern and central Gaza, where they can be safe and out of the line of fire", he said.

International bodies have called for more time to get medical supplies, food and fuel into Gaza, where an estimated 1.7 million people have been forced from their homes.

The truce had allowed people to return to the ruins of their homes to pick through the rubble for remaining belongings and provided a sense of safety after weeks of daily bombardment.

The violence in Gaza has also raised tensions in the West Bank, where nearly 240 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers since October 7, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.

The New York Times reported that Israeli authorities were aware Hamas was planning a major assault, and had obtained a blueprint for the attack, which the group appears to have largely followed on October 7.

Intelligence and military officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, even after a warning that the group had carried out a training exercise in line with the plan, according to the report.

GAZA STRIP Palestinian Territory — After a career in the shadows, spent in Israeli prisons and the internal security apparatus of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar rose to lead the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip.

Now, Israeli officers say, he is a “dead man walking”.

Sinwar stands accused of masterminding the group’s October 7 sudden attacks, the worst in Israel’s history, which officials say left around 1,200 people dead and about 240 dragged back to Gaza as hostages.

It was probably a year or two in the planning, “took everyone by surprise” and “changed the balance of power on the ground”, said Leila Seurat of the Arab Centre for Research and Political Studies (CAREP) in Paris.

The ascetic 61-year-old has not been seen since October 7. Known for his secrecy, Sinwar is a security operator “par excellence”, according to Abu Abdallah, a Hamas member who spent years alongside him in Israeli jails.

“He makes decisions in the utmost calm, but is intractable when it comes to defending the interests of Hamas,” Abu Abdallah told AFP in 2017 after his former co-detainee was elected Hamas’s leader in Gaza.

Punishing collaborators 

After October 7, Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht called Sinwar the “face of evil” and declared him a “dead man walking”.

Born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza, Sinwar joined Hamas when Sheikh Ahmad Yassin founded the group around the time the first Palestinian intifada began in 1987.

Sinwar set up the group’s internal security apparatus the following year, and went on to head an intelligence unit dedicated to flushing Palestinians accused of providing information to Israel.

A graduate of the Islamic University in Gaza, he learned perfect Hebrew during his 23 years in Israeli jails, and is said to have a deep understanding of Israeli culture and society.

He was serving four life terms for the killing of two Israeli soldiers when he became the most senior of 1,027 Palestinians released in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.

Sinwar later became a senior commander in the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, before taking overall leadership of the movement in Gaza.

While his predecessor had encouraged efforts by Hamas to present a moderate face to the world, Sinwar has preferred to force the Palestinian issue to the fore by more violent means.

Gaza’s Hamas government says Israel’s withering aerial and ground assault has killed nearly 15,000 people in the Palestinian territory, most of them civilians.

‘Radical and pragmatic’ 

Sinwar dreams of a single Palestinian state bringing together the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fateh party, and occupied East Jerusalem.

According to US think tank the Council on Foreign Relations, he has vowed to punish anyone obstructing reconciliation with Fateh, the rival political movement with which Hamas engaged in factional fighting after elections in 2006.

That coming together remains elusive, but the prisoner releases resulting from the current truce agreement with Israel have seen Hamas’s popularity soar in the West Bank.

Sinwar has pursued a path of being “radical in military planning and pragmatic in politics”, according to Seurat.

“He doesn’t advocate force for force’s sake, but to bring about negotiations” with Israel, she said.

The Hamas chief was added to the US list of the most wanted “international terrorists” in 2015, as was Mohammed Deif, the current commander of the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades and another alleged October 7 mastermind.

Security sources outside Gaza say that both Sinwar and Deif have taken refuge in the network of tunnels built under the territory to withstand Israeli bombs.

Vowing earlier this month to “find and eliminate” Sinwar, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant urged Gazans to turn Sinwar in, adding “if you reach him before us, it will shorten the war”.

DUBAI — The UN climate conference opened on Thursday in United Arab Emirates with nations urged to make faster cuts to planet-warming emissions and phase out fossil fuels.

The two-week-long negotiations in a vast exhibition venue in Dubai come at a pivotal moment, with emissions still climbing and the UN saying this year is likely to be the hottest in human history.

World leaders, Britain's King Charles III and activists and lobbyists are among more than 97,000 people jetting into the flashy Gulf city, which boasts the world's tallest skyscraper one of its busiest airports, and an indoor ski slope.

Double the size of last year's conference, COP28 is billed as the largest-ever climate gathering and the UN and hosts the UAE say they will be the most important since Paris 2015.

There, nations agreed to limit global warming to well below 2ºC since the pre-industrial era, and preferably to a safer limit of 1.5ºC.

But scientists say the world is off-track, and the nearly 200 nations gathering for COP28 must commit to accelerating climate action or risk the worst impacts of a warming planet.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said leaders should aim for a complete "phaseout" of fossil fuels, a proposal opposed by some powerful nations that has dogged past negotiations.

"Obviously, I am strongly in favour of language that includes [a] phaseout, even with a reasonable time framework," Guterres told AFP before flying to Dubai.

A central focus will be a stocktake of the world's limited progress on curbing global warming, which requires an official response at these talks.

On Thursday, nations were expected to formally approve the launch of a "loss and damage" fund to compensate climate-vulnerable countries after a year of hard-fought negotiations over how it would work.

Christiana Figueres, who was UN climate chief when the Paris deal was reached, questioned the role of fossil fuel companies at COP and said she was “giving up hope” they could be part of the solution to warming.

“A very clear signal that the era of fossil fuels needs to end very rapidly is our litmus test for COP28,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager at Oil Change International.

Rallying a common position on the matter will be difficult at COP where all nations, whether dependent on oil, sinking beneath rising seas or locked in geopolitical rivalry, must take decisions unanimously.

The UAE hopes to marshal an agreement on the tripling of renewable energy and doubling the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

Nations will navigate a range of thorny issues between November 30 and December 12, and experts say geopolitical tensions and building trust could be a huge challenge.

At the opening of the conference, delegates were asked to pause for a minute’s silence for civilians killed in the Gaza conflict.

WASHINGTON — A US Navy warship shot down a drone on Wednesday launched from a part of Yemen controlled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the American military's Central Command said.

The Houthis, who control much of Yemen and are part of an "axis of resistance" arrayed against Israel, have launched a series of drones and missiles since the start of the Hamas-Israel war last month.

"At approximately 1100 [Sanaa time], while in the South Red Sea, the Arleigh-Burke Class Guided Missile Destroyer USS Carney [DDG 64] shot down an Iranian-produced KAS04 unmanned aerial vehicle launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen," CENTCOM said in a statement.

"Although its intentions are not known, the UAV was heading toward the warship," which was escorting a US Navy oiler and a US-flagged ship carrying military equipment, it said, adding that "there were no injuries to US personnel and no damage to US vessels".

US warships have shot down drones or missiles launched from Yemen on several occasions in recent weeks.

The US Navy downed multiple drones on November 23, one drone on November 15, and both missiles and drones on October 19, while the Houthis shot down an American drone earlier this month.

The drone and missile launches and shootdowns are related to the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza which began after Hamas' sudden attack on October 7. Israel responded to the attack with a relentless land and air campaign on Hamas-controlled Gaza that the group's officials say has killed nearly 15,000 people.

Those deaths have provoked widespread anger in the Middle East and provided an impetus for attacks against American troops in the region as well as on Israel by armed groups opposed to both.

Israel has faced drone and missiles launched from Lebanon and Yemen, while American forces in Iraq and Syria have been targeted in a series of attacks that have injured dozens of US personnel.

Washington has blamed the attacks on its personnel on Iran-backed forces and responded with air strikes on multiple occasions.