Dozens were killed or unaccounted for in Gaza on Thursday after Israeli strikes, on the day the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war.
With warrants also issued for Netanyahu’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s military chief, all three men face accusations of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the conflict sparked by the October 7 attack.
One strike near the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north of the territory left “dozens of people” dead or missing, the facility’s director Hossam Abu Safiya told AFP.
Another strike was reported in a neighbourhood of Gaza City, with civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal saying 22 were dead.
“There is a headless body. We don’t yet know who this is,” Moataz al-Arouqi, who lives in the area, told AFP.
Since Hamas conducted the October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, Israel has been fighting a war in Gaza, which the militant group rules.
It vows to crush Hamas and to bring home the hostages seized by the group during the attack.
Israel has faced growing international criticism over its conduct of the Gaza war, including from its allies, despite global solidarity with the victims of October 7.
The ICC’s move now theoretically limits the movement of Netanyahu as any of the court’s 124 national members would be obliged to arrest him on their territory.
An arrest warrant has also been issued for Gallant, whom Netanyahu sacked as defence minister on November 5, and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif.
In August Israel said it had killed Deif in Gaza the previous month. Hamas has not confirmed his death.
The arrest warrants prompted swift and strong condemnation from Israel, with Netanyahu branding the decision “anti-Semitic” and comparing it to a “modern-day Dreyfus trial”.
He was referring to the 19th century Alfred Dreyfus affair in which a French Jewish army captain was wrongly convicted of treason.
Hamas on the other hand hailed the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, calling the decision an “important step towards justice”. It did not mention the warrant for Deif.
Lebanon front
Israel is also fighting Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both groups are backed by Israel’s arch-foe Iran.
On Thursday, US envoy Amos Hochstein was due to meet Netanyahu to seek a truce in the war in Lebanon.
Hochstein’s meetings in Lebanon this week appeared to indicate some progress in efforts to end that war.
On the Gaza front, the United States vetoed on Wednesday a UN Security Council push for a ceasefire that Washington said would have emboldened Hamas.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said the death toll from the resulting war has reached 44,056 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.
‘Freedom to act’
Following the October 7 attack, Hezbollah began launching cross-border strikes on Israel in support of Hamas.
In September, Israel expanded the focus of its war from Gaza to Lebanon, vowing to fight Hezbollah until tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the cross-border fire are able to return home.
With Hochstein in Lebanon, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Wednesday said that any ceasefire deal must ensure Israel still has the “freedom to act” against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem threatened to strike Israeli commercial hub Tel Aviv in retaliation for attacks on Lebanon’s capital.
“Israel cannot defeat us and cannot impose its conditions on us,” Qassem said in a defiant televised address.
In Lebanon, Hochstein met with officials including parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah.
200 children
More than 3,558 people in Lebanon have been killed since the clashes began, Lebanese authorities have said, most since late September.
Among them were more than 200 children, according to the United Nations.
On the Israeli side, a total of 82 Israeli soldiers and 47 civilians have died in the hostilities on the Lebanese front.
Israel has intensified strikes on neighbouring Syria, the main conduit of weapons for Hezbollah from its backer Iran.
In the latest attack, a Syria war monitor said 79 pro-Iran fighters were killed in strikes on Palmyra in the east of the country.
Those killed in Wednesday’s strikes included 53 fighters from pro-Iran Syrian groups and 26 foreign fighters, mostly from Iraq as well as four from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the monitor said.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country.
Strikes in Lebanon
On Thursday, successive rounds of strikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah’s main bastion, following evacuation calls by the Israeli military.
One post on X by Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said the military targeted “terrorist command headquarters and Hezbollah military infrastructure” in the area.
Strikes also hit south Lebanon, including the border town of Khiam where Israeli troops are pushing to advance, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency.
Hezbollah claimed a series of attacks on Thursday, including one on a base near south Israel’s Ashdod, its deepest so far.
On Thursday, rocket fire from Lebanon hit a playground in northern Israel, killing one man, Israeli first responders said.
Hezbollah was the only armed group in Lebanon that did not surrender its weapons following the 1975-1990 civil war.
It has maintained a formidable arsenal and holds sway not only on the battlefield but also in Lebanese politics.