Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip during its war with Hamas, saying it has sought to deliberately destroy Palestinians by mounting deadly attacks, demolishing vital infrastructure and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid. The human rights group released a report Thursday in the Middle East that said such actions could not be justified by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel, which ignited the war, or the presence of militants in civilian areas. Amnesty said the United States and other allies of Israel could be complicit in genocide, and called on them to halt arms shipments. Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now, Agns Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said in the report. Israel, which was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has adamantly rejected genocide allegations against it as an antisemitic blood libel. It i
Israeli airstrikes tore through a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza on Wednesday, sparking fires and killing at least 21 people, according to the head of a nearby hospital, in the latest assault on a sprawling tent city that Israel designated a humanitarian safe zone but has repeatedly targeted. The Israeli military said it struck senior Hamas militants involved in terrorist activities in the area, without providing additional details, and said it took precautions to minimize harm to civilians. The strike on the Muwasi tent camp was one of several deadly assaults across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. An Israeli attack in central Gaza killed at least 10 more people, including four children, according to Palestinian medics. Israel's devastating war in Gaza, launched after Hamas' October 2023 attack, shows no signs of ending after nearly 14 months. Hamas is still holding dozens of Israeli hostages, and most of Gaza's population has been displaced and is reliant on ...
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India voted in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution that called for the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, and reiterated the call for achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in West Asia. The draft resolution Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine' tabled by Senegal was overwhelmingly adopted in the 193-member General Assembly on Tuesday. India was among the 157 nations that voted in favour, while eight Member States - Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the United States voted against it. Cameroon, Czechia, Ecuador, Georgia, Paraguay, Ukraine and Uruguay abstained. The resolution, adopted as orally revised, reiterated its call for the achievement, without delay, of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East (West Asia) on the basis of the relevant United Nations resolutions and an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, includi
Israeli forces carried out several new drone and artillery strikes in Lebanon on Tuesday, including a deadly strike that the Health Ministry and state media said killed a shepherd, further shaking a tenuous ceasefire meant to end more than a year of fighting with Hezbollah. The shooting came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed keep striking with an iron fist against perceived Hezbollah violations of the truce. His defence minister warned that if the ceasefire collapses, Israel will target not just Hezbollah but the Lebanese state an expansion of Israel's campaign. Since it began last Wednesday, the US- and French-brokered 60-day ceasefire has been rattled by near daily Israeli strikes, although Israel has been vague about the purported Hezbollah violations that prompted them. On Monday, it was shaken by its biggest test yet. Hezbollah fired two projectiles toward an Israeli-held disputed border zone, its first volley since the ceasefire began, saying it was a warning
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The Israel Defense Forces said Hezbollah fired two missiles toward Mount Dov on Monday but the missiles fell in open areas, causing no casualties.
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The International Criminal Court's member states open their annual meeting Monday while the court faces pushback over arrest warrants for Israeli officials, sexual harassment allegations against the court's chief prosecutor and a very empty docket. The Assembly of States Parties, which represents the ICC's 124 member countries, will convene its 23rd conference to elect committee members and approve the court's budget against a backdrop of unfavourable headlines. Last month, judges granted a request from the court's chief prosecutor Karim Khan to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and Hamas' military chief, accusing them of crimes against humanity in connection with the nearly 14-month war in Gaza. It marks the first time that a sitting leader of a major Western ally has been accused by the global court of justice. The decision has been denounced by critics of the court and given only milquetoast approval by many of its ..
Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least six people overnight, including two young children who died in the tent where their family was sheltering, medical officials said Sunday. The strike in the Muwasi area, a sprawling tent camp housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people, also wounded the children's mother and their sibling, according to the nearby Nasser Hospital. An Associated Press reporter at the hospital saw the bodies. A separate strike in the southern city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, killed four men, according to hospital records. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its daily strikes across Gaza often kill women and children. The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around people 250 hostage. Some 100 captives are still being held inside Gaza, around
An Israeli airstrike on a car in the Gaza Strip on Saturday killed five people including employees of World Central Kitchen, and the charity said it was urgently seeking more details after Israel's military said it targeted a WCK worker who was part of the Hamas attack that sparked the war. WCK said it was heartbroken by the airstrike and that it had no knowledge anyone in the car had alleged ties to the Oct 7, 2023 attack, saying it was working with incomplete information. It said it was pausing operations in Gaza. The charity's work in Gaza was temporarily suspended earlier this year after an Israeli strike killed seven of its workers, most of them foreigners. The Israeli military in a statement said the alleged Oct 7 attacker had taken part in the assault on the kibbutz of Nir Oz, and it asked senior officials from the international community and the WCK administration to clarify" how he had come to work for the charity. The violence in Gaza raged even as a ceasefire between Isr
Israeli aircraft struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites along Syria's border with Lebanon, the Israeli military said Saturday, testing a fragile, days-old ceasefire that halted months of fighting between the sides but has seen continued sporadic fire. The military said it struck sites that had been used to smuggle weapons from Syria to Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect, which the military said was a violation of its terms. There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or activists monitoring the conflict in that country. Hezbollah also did not immediately comment. The Israeli strike, the latest of several since the ceasefire began on Wednesday, came as unrest spread to other areas of the Middle East, with Syrian insurgents breaching the country's largest city, Aleppo, in a shock offensive that added fresh uncertainty to a region reeling from multiple wars. The truce between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, brokered by the United States and France, calls for an
The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah brought hope for normality back to many in southern Lebanon on Friday, including fishermen who have long launched their single-engine wooden boats into the Mediterranean at dawn. During the last two months of its year fighting Hezbollah, Israel imposed a siege on southern Lebanon that kept hundreds of fishers at this ancient Phoenician port on shore, upending their lives and the industry. While less important than destruction and displacement, the port siege cut many people off from the key ingredients for traditional Lebanese dishes like sayadiyeh fish and rice boiled in fish sauce or fried and grilled fish eaten with dips such as hummus and tabbouleh or fattoush salads. The loss of fish damaged a deep association with home, but now the possibility of renewed Lebanese fishing on the country's southern coast is helping fuel hope for a brighter future. On Friday, a few boats went out close to the shore as fishers in the port worked on the
Thousands of people made the crossing back into Lebanon from Syria on the second day of a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, after nearly 14 months of fighting. At the Jousieh border crossing in the Qusair area of Syria's Homs province, on Lebanon's northeastern border, bumper-to-bumper cars lined up on Thursday waiting to be cleared for crossing. All four lanes were taken up by cars making their way into Lebanon, while those waiting to cross into Syria had to use an offroad. Of the six border crossings between Lebanon and Syria, two remain functional after Israeli airstrikes forced the others shut. The two countries share a border 375 kilometres long. Over 600,000 people fleeing Lebanon poured into Syria in the past year, most of them after the war between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in mid-September. The cross-border flow was a striking reversal in fortunes given that Lebanon is still hosting more than 1 million Syrian refugees who fled the war in their country that began
Thousands of Lebanese displaced by the war between Israel and Hezbollah militants returned home on Wednesday as a ceasefire took hold, driving cars stacked with personal belongings and defying warnings from Lebanese and Israeli troops to avoid some areas. If it endures, the ceasefire would end nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which escalated in mid-September into all-out war and threatened to pull Hezbollah's patron, Iran, and Israel's closest ally, the United States, into a broader conflagration. The deal does not address the war in Gaza, where Israeli strikes overnight on two schools-turned-shelters in Gaza City killed 11 people, including four children, according to hospital officials. Israel said one strike targeted a Hamas sniper and the other targeted militants hiding among civilians. The truce in Lebanon could give reprieve to the 1.2 million Lebanese displaced by the fighting and the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along the ...
Ambassador Reuven Azar said that Israel has given very severe blows to Hamas
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A ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah appeared to be holding Wednesday, as residents in cars heaped with belongings streamed back toward southern Lebanon despite warnings from the Israeli and Lebanese military that they stay away from certain areas. If it holds, the ceasefire would bring an end to nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which escalated in mid-September into all-out war and threatened to pull Hezbollah's patron Iran and Israel into a broader conflagration. It could give some reprieve to the 1.2 million Lebanese displaced by the fighting and the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along the border with Lebanon. The US- and France-brokered deal, approved by Israel late Tuesday, calls for an initial two-month halt to fighting and requires Hezbollah to end its armed presence in southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops are to return to their side of the border. Thousands of additional Lebanese troops and UN ..
Strikes came moments after US President Joe Biden announced that a ceasefire would come into effect at 4 am local time (0200 GMT) on Wednesday to halt hostilities
The Biden administration kept President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration closely apprised of its efforts to broker the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah that is slated to go into effect early Wednesday, according to the outgoing Democratic administration. Trump's team, meanwhile, was quick to spike the football and claim credit for the rare spot of good news for a Democratic administration that's been dragged down by the grinding Mideast conflict. "Everyone is coming to the table because of President Trump," Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump's choice for his national security adviser, said in a post on X on Tuesday, shortly before the Israel Cabinet signed off on the agreement. "His resounding victory sent a clear message to the rest of the world that chaos won't be tolerated. I'm glad to see concrete steps towards deescalation in the Middle East." The Biden administration's reported coordination with Trump's team on its efforts to forge the ceasefire in Lebanon i