Gaza:

A Gaza hospital source said at least 10 people were killed and dozens wounded Tuesday in a strike on a school turned shelter for displaced Palestinians, the fourth such attack in four days.

The strike hit the gate at the Al-Awda school in Abasan, near the southern city of Khan Yunis, said the source at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis where victims were taken.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has acknowledged carrying out three other strikes since Saturday on Gaza schools used as displacement shelters.

At least 20 people were killed in these attacks, according to officials in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel said all three strikes targeted operatives hiding in the schools.

On Saturday, an Israeli strike hit the UN-run Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat, central Gaza, killing 16 people, according to the territory’s health ministry.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 2,000 people were sheltering there at the time.

The following day a strike on the church-run Holy Family school in Gaza City killed four, according to the civil defence agency.

The Latin Patriarchate, owners of the school, said hundreds of people had packed the grounds.

Another UNRWA-run school in Nuseirat was hit on Monday, with a local hospital saying several people were taken for treatment.

Israel said it targeted “several terrorists” using the school for cover.

Hamas has denied Israeli claims that it uses schools, hospitals and other civilian facilities for military aims.

According to UNRWA, more than 500 people have been killed in schools and other shelters it runs in Gaza since the war started on October 7 with the Hamas attack on Israel.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Gaza:

A Hamas official said Sunday the Palestinian group was ready to discuss a hostage release deal with Israel even without a “complete” ceasefire.

The apparent easing of Hamas’s position comes as long-stalled diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage release have gathered pace with a new proposal and meetings hosted by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

“Hamas had previously required that Israel agree to a complete and permanent ceasefire,” the top official told AFP as the war entered its 10th month.

But mediators have offered assurances “that as long as the… negotiations continued, the ceasefire would continue”, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Israel, which vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s October 7 attack that sparked the war, has repeatedly rejected demands for a permanent ceasefire.

US President Joe Biden announced a plan in late May that included an initial six-week truce and the exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Talks quickly stalled but a US official said Thursday that a new text from Hamas “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal”.

Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News said late Saturday that Cairo was “hosting Israeli and American delegations” and mediators were in contact with Hamas amid “intensive Egyptian meetings this week with all parties”.

In Israel, anti-government protesters demanding a hostage release deal blocked roads in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv on a nationwide “disruption day” from 6:29 am, the time Hamas launched their attack on October 7.

Data scientist Yoni Peleg, 34, said protesters were crying “out for help… to end the war” and pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to secure the release of the remaining hostages.

Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Hamas seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.

Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,153 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel has said it would send a delegation to continue talks with Qatari mediators, though a government spokesman said Friday there were still “gaps” with Hamas.

An official with knowledge of the mediation said US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns would also go to Qatar this week.

If full negotiations start, Hamas expects them to take between two to three weeks, according to the official from the Islamist movement.

Schools hit

The fighting and bombardment in Gaza raged on unabated, with witnesses reporting strikes and shelling in the central Bureij refugee camp, the far-southern Rafah city and elsewhere.

The Palestine Red Crescent said two children were among six dead when a house in central Gaza was hit, and paramedics reported nine fatalities in two strikes on Gaza City in the north of the coastal territory.

An AFP correspondent said Israeli drones were firing in Gaza City’s Shujaiya district, which has seen intense battles for nearly two weeks.

The Israeli military said that in Shujaiya, its troops killed “several” militants and dismantled militant infrastructure.

The military issued on Sunday an evacuation order for a nearby area of Gaza City. Similar orders in the past have preceded military incursions.

Israeli forces were also “conducting operations” in Rafah and around the municipality building in nearby Khan Yunis, which according to the military was being used by Hamas fighters.

The latest Gaza health ministry toll includes 16 people killed Saturday in a strike on a UN-run school turned shelter in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. 

Israel’s military said the school had been used by militants.

Another strike Sunday on a church-run school in Gaza City killed at least four people, said the civil defence agency.

Israel’s military confirmed the strike “in the area of” Holy Family School, which it said served as a militant hideout.

Plea for ‘caution’

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, a Hamas ally, fired rocket salvoes at northern Israel in the latest cross-border clashes that have sparked fears of a full-scale war.

Since the Gaza war began, Israeli forces and Hezbollah have exchanged almost daily cross-border fire, with attacks and rhetoric escalating in recent weeks.

Israel on Saturday struck deep inside eastern Lebanon, killing a Hezbollah operative.

Hezbollah said it had targeted an Israeli army base west of Tiberias “in response to the… assassination” carried out the day before, later claiming more barrages of rockets.

Israeli officials reported four people wounded by shrapnel, including a 31-year-old man who was “in serious and stable condition”, according to the Galilee Medical Center.

Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in his first telephone conversation with Netanyahu on Sunday, said the border clashes were “concerning” and urged all sides to exercise “caution”.

A spokesperson for Starmer said he also “set out the clear and urgent need for a ceasefire” in Gaza as well as hostage release and “an immediate increase” in aid into the besieged territory.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, meeting troops in the annexed Golan Heights, said “we continue to fight” even if a deal with Hamas is reached.

“I very much hope that we will be able to reach it”, Gallant said, according to a statement from his office.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Demonstrators wave Israeli flags during a protest marking nine months since the start of the war and calling for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on July 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Marking nine months since the war in Gaza started, Israeli protesters blocked highways across the country on July 7, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down and pushing for a ceasefire that could bring back the hostages held by Hamas.

The demonstrations come as international mediators have renewed efforts to broker a deal. Hamas over the weekend appeared to have dropped a key demand for an Israeli commitment to end the war, according to Egyptian and Hamas officials who spoke to The Associated Press.

Also read | Israeli cabinet to consider Hamas ceasefire proposal: source

The current war followed after the Palestinian militant group carried out a cross-border attack on Oct. 7, saw 1,200 people killed and 250 others taken hostage. A retaliatory Israeli air and ground offensive has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Sunday’s “Day of Disruption” started at 6:29 A.M., the moment that Hamas militants launched the first rockets toward Israel in October. Protesters blocked main roads and demonstrated outside of the homes of members of Israel’s parliament.

Near the border with Gaza, Israeli protestors released 1,500 black and yellow balloons to symbolize those who were killed and abducted.

Hannah Golan said she came to protest the “devastating abandonment of our communities by our government.” She added: “It’s nine months today, to this black day, and still nobody in our government takes responsibility.”

About 120 hostages remain captive after more than 100 hostages were released as part of a November cease-fire deal. Israel has already concluded that more than 40 of the remaining hostages are dead, and fears spread the number may grow as the war drags on.

The Israeli Prime Minister had previously said while he was open to pausing the war as part of a hostage deal, Israel would press on until it reached its goals of destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and bringing home all those held captive by Hamas.

Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza continued, with nine Palestinians reported dead from Israeli strikes overnight and into the early hours of Sunday.

Six Palestinians were killed in central Gaza after a strike hit a house in the town of Zawaida, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Another Israeli airstrike early Sunday hit a house west of Gaza City, killing another three people, the strip’s Hamas-linked civil defense said.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday an Israeli airstrike killed at least 16 people and wounded at least 50 others in a school-turned-shelter in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The Israeli military said they were targeting Hamas militants and had taken “numerous steps” to reduce civilian casualties.

Also Sunday morning, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it launched dozens of projectiles toward northern Israel in the north, targeting areas more than 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, deeper than most launches.

A 28-year-old Israeli man was seriously wounded in Kfar Zeitim, a small town near the city of Tiberias, Israel’s national rescue service reported.

The barrage came after the Israeli military said in a statement an airstrike targeted a car and killed an engineer in Hezbollah’s air defense unit Saturday. Hezbollah confirmed al-Attar’s death but did not give information on his position.

Near-daily clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces over the past nine months have threatened to turn into an all-out regional war and have catastrophic consequences for people on both sides of the border.

Mediators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar have intensified their efforts in the past week to reach an agreement.

The compromise on Saturday by Hamas could deliver the first pause in fighting since November and set the stage for further talks, though all sides still warned that a deal is not yet guaranteed.

Washington’s phased deal would start with a “full and complete” six-week cease-fire during which older, sick and female hostages would be released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. During those 42 days, Israeli forces would withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza and allow the return of displaced people to their homes in northern Gaza, the officials said.

War-weary Palestinians in the Gaza Strip appeared pessimistic about the possibility of reaching a cease-fire as the Israel-Hamas war marked nine months on Sunday.

“We have lived nine months of suffering,” Heba Radi, a displaced Palestinian woman, told the AP. “The cease-fire has become a distant dream,”

The mother of six children spoke from her tent in the central city of Deir al-Balah where she sheltered after they fled their home in Gaza City.

“Every day, we tell ourselves tomorrow (there will be a cease-fire),” she said, “and tomorrow will be better. And when tomorrow comes, they say (the negotiations) were postponed.”

Zakia Hasanein is an 80-year-old Palestinian woman, who also sheltered in Deir al-Balah, appealed to Netanyahu and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh to agree on a cease-fire, saying they “lived like the dead.”

The Israel-Hamas war has caused widespread damage in Gaza. Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order have curtailed humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine. The top U.N. court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.

Cairo/Gaza:

Israeli forces advanced further on Sunday into the Shejaia neighbourhood of northern Gaza and also pushed deeper into western and central Rafah in the south, killing at least six Palestinians and destroying several homes, residents said.

Israeli tanks, which moved back into Shejaia four days ago, fired shells towards several houses, leaving families trapped inside and unable to leave, the residents said.

Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his stance that there is no substitute for victory in the war against the Islamist operative Hamas.

“We are committed to fighting until we achieve all of our objectives: Eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages, ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel and returning our residents securely to their homes in the south and the north,” he said.

While the offensive focused on Gaza, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, one man was killed and five were wounded in an Israeli strike near the city of Tulkarm, according to the Palestinian health ministry. The dead man was a member of an operative Islamic Jihad, the group said. The Israeli military issued no comment.

Hours after Netanyahu’s comments about Gaza, the armed wing of Hamas released a video purporting to show weapons-making, in a show of defiance.

The video, which was not immediately verified by Reuters, showed fighters preparing anti-tank rocket warheads. In the background, a large TV screen showed recent news events to indicate the video was recent.

“Our preparation is continuing,” said writing at the end of the short film.

The Israeli military said forces operating in Shejaia had killed several Palestinian gunmen over the past day and found military infrastructure inside a United Nations school as well as dozens of weapons and “valuable intelligence documents”.

On Saturday the military announced the death of two Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza.

In another raid in Shejaia, the forces located a “terrorist war room” at a clinic, said the military, which again accused Hamas of “embedding itself in civilian structures for terror purposes”.

Hamas denies using civilian sites such as schools and hospitals for military purposes.

The armed wing of Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad reported fierce fighting in both Shejaia and Rafah, saying their fighters had fired anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs against Israeli forces operating there.

More than eight months into Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza, operatives continue to stage attacks on Israeli forces, operating in areas that the Israeli army said it had gained control over months ago.

STALLED CEASEFIRE EFFORTS

Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the United States, have stalled. Hamas says any deal must end the war and bring a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in the fighting until Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007, is eradicated.

The war began when Hamas-led operatives stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has so far killed nearly 38,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, and has left the heavily built-up coastal enclave in ruins.

The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but officials say most of the dead are civilians. More than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza and Israel says at least a third of the Palestinian dead are fighters.

Israeli tanks pushed deeper into several districts in the east, west and centre of Rafah, near the border with Egypt, on Sunday, and medics said six people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a house in Shaboura, in the heart of the city.

The six bodies from the Zurub family were transferred to Nasser Hospital in the nearby city of Khan Younis, where dozens of relatives paid their respects.

Residents said the Israeli army had torched the Al-Awda mosque in the centre of Rafah, one of the city’s best-known.

Israel has said its military operations in Rafah are aimed at eradicating the last armed battalions of Hamas.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinian men walk along a narrow street past destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip
| Photo Credit: AFP

At least 39 people were killed by Israeli strikes across northern Gaza on Saturday, as rescue workers scrambled to find survivors beneath the rubble, according to Palestinian and hospital officials.

Fadel Naem, director of the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, told The Associated Press that more than three dozen bodies arrived at the hospital. The Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency group active in Gaza, said its emergency workers were digging for survivors at the site of a strike in the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City and that it had pulled several dozen bodies from a building hit by an Israeli strike in an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City.

Israel said Saturday that its fighter jets struck two Hamas military sites in the Gaza City area but did not elaborate further.

The deaths come a day after at least 25 people were killed in strikes on tent camps and 50 wounded near the southern city of Rafah. Israel said Saturday that it was continuing to operate in central and southern Gaza and has pushed ahead with its invasion of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. Most have now fled the city, but the United Nations says no place in Gaza is safe and humanitarian conditions are dire as families shelter in tents and cramped apartments without adequate food, water or medical supplies.

A separate Israeli strike Saturday in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley killed a member of the military wing of al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Group, a Sunni Muslim faction closely allied with Hamas, according to the group. The member was the seventh killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the war began.

The Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7. when Hamas militants who stormed southern Israel killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage. Israel has responded by bombarding and invading the enclave, killing more than 37, 400 Palestinians there according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Also Saturday, Israel’s army said an Israeli man was fatally shot in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya, where Israeli forces fatally shot two militants Friday, the latest flare of violence in the territory since the Israel-Hamas war erupted.

At least 549 Palestinians in the territory have been killed by Israeli fire since the war began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which tracks the killings. Over the same period, Palestinians in the West Bank have killed at least nine Israelis, including five soldiers, according to U.N. data.

Israeli nationals are prohibited from entering Qalqilya and other areas of the West Bank that fall under the under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

In April, the death of a 14-year-old Israeli settler sparked a series of settler attacks on Palestinian towns in the territory. The army said a Palestinian was later arrested in connection with the killing.

On Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 12-year-old Palestinian boy died from his wounds after being shot by Israeli forces in Ramallah last week. Commenting on the shooting, the Israeli army said its forces raided al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah to arrest a suspect Friday and then opened fire on a group of Palestinians who were pelting them with stones.

Israel said Saturday that it was investigating a separate incident into conduct of its soldiers after a video surfaced online showing an injured Palestinian being transported on the hood of an Israeli armored car in the northern West Bank. The army said the man in the video was a wanted suspect and injured during an exchange of fire between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces near the city of Jenin. The man was being transported to a Red Crescent ambulance situated nearby, it said. The army said the conduct in the video didn’t “conform to the values” of the army.

Anger across the country is growing at the government’s handling of the war in Gaza and the hostage crisis.

On Saturday, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Tel Aviv calling for new elections and for the government to bring the hostages home. Among the families were the parents of Naama Levy, an Israeli soldier who marked her 20th birthday in captivity.

___

Jeffery reported from Ramallah and Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Jerusalem:

Days after Israel announced a daily pause in fighting on a key route to allow more aid into Gaza, chaos in the besieged Palestinian territory has left vital supplies piled up and undistributed in the searing summer heat.

More than eight months of war, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, have led to dire humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip and repeated UN warnings of famine.

Desperation among Gaza’s 2.4 million population has increased as fighting rages, sparking warnings from agencies that they are unable to deliver aid.

Israel says it has let supplies in and called on agencies to step up deliveries.

“The breakdown of public order and safety is increasingly endangering humanitarian workers and operations in Gaza,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said in a briefing late Friday.

“Alongside the fighting, criminal activities and the risk of theft and robbery has effectively prevented humanitarian access to critical locations.”

But Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks of aid into southern Gaza, trading blame with the United Nations over why the aid is stacking up.

It shared aerial footage of containers lined up on the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom crossing and more trucks arriving to add to the stockpile.

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

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

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 37,551 people, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

The blame game

With civil order breaking down in Gaza, the UN says it has been unable to pick up any supplies from Kerem Shalom since Tuesday, leaving crucial aid in limbo.

A deputy UN spokesman this week said the crossing “is operating with limited functionality, including because of fighting in the area”.

William Schomburg, International Committee of the Red Cross chief in Rafah, said arranging lorries from the Egyptian side in particular was complicated.

“It’s not just a question of civil order, but also the fact that you often have to cross battlefields,” he said in an online briefing, adding that the area near Kerem Shalom had been hostile.

“There were even rockets fired nearby. So this whole area is particularly complicated to navigate for reasons linked to the hostilities and for reasons linked to general security.”

Israel’s coordinator for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, known as COGAT, said Thursday “the content of 1,200 aid trucks awaits collection by UN aid agencies”, saying a lack of distribution was responsible.

Earlier in the week, COGAT spokesman Shimon Freedman told reporters at the crossing the daily pause on a southern road into Gaza was designed to allow the UN “to collect and distribute more aid” alongside an Israeli military presence.

He said most of the aid had not moved because “organisations have not taken sufficient steps to improve their distribution capacity”.

‘Don’t see any aid’

Aid agencies have instead pointed to Israel’s offensive on the southern city of Rafah, which pushed out more than a million people and closed a border crossing with Egypt, as a deepening humanitarian crisis hampered relief efforts.

Schomburg described Rafah City as a “ghost town”.

“It is a ghost town in the sense that you see very few people, high levels of destruction, and really just another symbol of the unfolding tragedy that has become Gaza over the last nine months,” he said.

The UN food agency has said its aid convoys have been looted inside Gaza by “desperate people”.

As both sides stall, it is the civilians in Gaza who are paying the price.

“We don’t see any aid. Everything we get to eat comes from our own money and it’s all very expensive,” said Umm Mohammad Zamlat, 66, from northern Gaza but now living in Khan Yunis in the south.

“Even agencies specialised in aid deliveries are not able to provide anything to us,” she added.

NGO Doctors Without Borders said on Friday that six trucks with 37 tons of supplies, mostly essentially medical items, have been held up at the Egyptian part of Kerem Shalom since June 14.

“This is incomprehensible and unacceptable,” a statement said.

“It’s like asking a fireman to watch a house filled with people burn down, and preventing him putting out the fire.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Mourners gather next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike that hit a tent camp, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Al-Mawasi area in western Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on June 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli forces shelled tent camps for displaced Palestinians north of Rafah on Friday, killing at least 25 people and wounding another 50 according to Gaza’s Heath Ministry and emergency workers, in the latest deadly attack in the tiny Palestinian territory where hundreds of thousands have fled fighting between Israel and Hamas.

According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders in Rafah, witnesses told rescue workers about the shelling at two locations in a coastal area that has become filled with tents. The Health Ministry reported the number of people killed and wounded in the attacks.

Also read | Israel may have violated laws of war in Gaza campaign, UN rights office says

The locations of the attacks provided by Civil Defense were just outside an Israeli-designated safe zone. The Israeli military said they were looking into the strikes at the reported coordinates. Israel has previously bombed locations in the vicinity of the “humanitarian zone” in Muwasi, a rural area on the Mediterranean coast that has filled with sprawling tent camps in recent months.

The strikes came as Israel pushed ahead with its military operation in Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting elsewhere in Gaza. Most have now fled Rafah, but the United Nations says no place in Gaza is safe and humanitarian conditions are dire as families shelter in tents and cramped apartments without adequate food, water, or medical supplies.

Friday’s strikes took place less than a month after an Israeli bombing triggered a deadly fire that tore through a camp for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, drawing widespread international outrage — including from some of Israel’s closest allies — over the military’s expanding offensive into Rafah.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that it tries to minimize civilian deaths. It blames the large number of civilian casualties on militants and says it’s because they operate among the population.

With Israel’s war against Hamas now in its ninth month, international criticism is growing over Israel’s campaign of systematic destruction in Gaza, at a huge cost in civilian lives. The top United Nations court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide ” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.

Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,100 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

Israel launched the war after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.

Jerusalem:

Israel’s top army spokesman said Wednesday that Hamas cannot be eliminated, prompting a knee-jerk reaction from the government which quickly reiterated it remains committed to the Palestinian terrorist group’s destruction.

More than eight months of war, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, have failed to oust the Islamist militants from Gaza but have brought widespread devastation.

“To say that we are going to make Hamas disappear is to throw sand in people’s eyes. If we don’t provide an alternative, in the end, we will have Hamas,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told Israel’s Channel 13 broadcaster.

“Hamas is an ideology, we cannot eliminate an ideology.”

His comments were quickly rebuffed by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose cabinet has stated its Gaza offensive will not end until Hamas is defeated.

“The political and security cabinet headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu defined as one of the goals of the war the destruction of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities,” his office said in a statement.

“The IDF is of course committed to this.”

In a separate statement on its Telegram channel, the military clarified that Hagari had addressed Hamas “as an ideology… and his statements were clear and explicit”.

“Any other claim is taking the statement out of context.”

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

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

Israel’s retaliatory offensive aimed at eliminating Hamas has killed at least 37,396 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Sri Lanka needs to connect with India to benefit from its industrial success: President Wickremesinghe

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Monsoon gathering pace, to strengthen in Maharashtra by June 21-22: IMD

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Mizoram awaits Centre instruction to initiate biometric enrollment for Myanmar refugees

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AI creating false stories about World War II, Holocaust: UNESCO

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Israel may have violated laws of war in Gaza campaign, UN rights office says

Israeli forces may have repeatedly violated fundamental principles of the laws of war and failed to distinguish between civilians and fighters in their Gaza Strip military campaign, the United Nations human rights office said. In a report assessing six Israeli attacks that caused a high number of casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure, the U.N. human rights office said Israeli forces “may have systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack.”

You are one of the greats: Wesley Hall tells Kohli

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Geneva:

Israeli forces may have repeatedly violated the laws of war and failed to distinguish between civilians and fighters in the Gaza conflict, the UN human rights office said on Wednesday.

Separately, the head of a UN inquiry accused the Israeli military of carrying out an “extermination” of Palestinians.

In a report on six deadly Israeli attacks, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said Israeli forces “may have systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack”.

“The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.

Israel’s permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva characterised the analysis as “factually, legally, and methodologically flawed”. “Since the OHCHR has, at best, a partial factual picture, any attempt to reach legal conclusions is inherently flawed,” it said.

In a separate meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the head of a UN Commission of Inquiry, Navi Pillay, said perpetrators of abuses in the conflict must be brought to account.

She repeated findings from a report published last week that both Hamas militants and Israel have committed war crimes but said that Israel alone was responsible for the most serious abuses under international law known as “crimes against humanity”.

She said the scale of Palestinian civilian losses amounted to “extermination”.

“We found that the immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of an intentional strategy to cause maximum damage,” Pillay, a former UN rights chief and South African judge, told the meeting.

Israel, which does not typically cooperate with the inquiry and alleges an anti-Israel bias, chose the mother of a hostage to speak on its behalf and criticised the report on the grounds that it did not give due attention to hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

“We can do better for them. The hostages need us,” Meirav Gonen, the mother of 23-year-old hostage Romi Gonen, said in a tearful appeal.

Heavy Weaponry

Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed more than 37,400 people in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory, according to health authorities there.

Israel launched its assault after Hamas fighters stormed across the border into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

The UN rights office report details six incidents that took place between Oct. 7 and Dec. 2, in which it was able to assess the kinds of weapons, the means and the methods used in these attacks.

“We felt that it was important to get this report out now, especially because in the case of some of these attacks, some eight months have passed, and we are yet to see credible and transparent investigations,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN human rights office.

She added that in the absence of transparent investigations, there would be “a need for international action in this regard”.

Pillay also condemned Israel’s military methods in Gaza, saying the use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas “constitutes an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population”.

Commissioner Chris Sidoti later told reporters that its findings, which are being shared with the International Criminal Court, showed that Israel was “one of the most criminal armies in the world.”

He said the inquiry, which aims to investigate the treatment of hostages, as well as that of thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, had so far been hindered by Israel.

“Far from having cooperation, what we have encountered is obstruction,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)