ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas leader

The ICC says it has grounds to believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister "intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity."

The statement was issued by a three-judge panel as it unanimously decided to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Hamas officials.

They have all been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza, which was triggered by the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

The arrest warrants turn Netanyahu and the others into internationally wanted suspects, but none of them is likely to come before the court soon. The ICC relies on cooperation from its member states — which include neither Israel nor its ally, the United States — to bring people to face trial.

The ICC prosecutes cases only when law enforcement authorities in a country cannot or will not do so themselves.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas official Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri amid the conflict in Gaza.

In its statement, the court said it had "reasonable grounds" to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant oversaw attacks on the civilian population in Gaza, and that they were also alleged to have used starvation as an instrument of war.   

It said that Israel's acceptance of the court's jurisdiction was not required.

Israel is not a member of the court, seated in The Hague in the Netherlands.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported on Thursday that Israel's military offensive has killed 44,056 people in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory since October 7, 2023.

The Health Ministry's count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but health officials have said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants without providing evidence.

Israel, Germany, the United States and several other countries classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. The Health Ministry casualty figures have been seen as reliable by the United Nations and other organizations that work in the region.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking another 250 people hostage. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, though Israeli officials believe a third of them are dead. Most of the remaining hostages were released during a cease-fire last year.

A 30-year-old man was killed by shrapnel from a rocket that hit the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service said.

The Israeli military said that around 10 rockets were launched from Lebanon towards the Galilee region in northern Israel, adding that "most of the projectiles were intercepted."

Nahariya lies some 34 kilometers (21 miles) north of the city of Haifa and around 9.5 kilometers south of the Israeli-Lebanese border.

The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza told the French news agency AFP that at least 22 civilians had been killed in an Israeli strike on a residential building near the hospital.

"Bodies arrive at the hospital in pieces," Hossam Abu Safia told AFP. "There are no ambulances. The health system has collapsed in northern Gaza."

At the same time, the region's civil defense agency said 22 people were killed in another strike on Gaza City.

According to Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry, at least 44,056 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the region since the start of Israel's war against Hamas in October 2023. 

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has updated the death toll from an Israeli strike on the Syrian city of Palmyra to 61. The Syrian Defense Ministry put the death toll at 36, mostly comprising Syrians connected to Hezbollah or other Iran-backed militias.

Palmyra is famous for its Greco-Roman ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that has been at risk for over a decade due to the Syrian civil war.

Israel has not commented on the strike but has said it is trying to curtail Hezbollah's influence across the region.

A group of Democratic US senators led by Bernie Sanders, an independent senator of Vermont, failed in an attempt to block US arms exports to Israel.

Sanders accused Washington of "complicity" in "atrocities" being carried out in Gaza.

"Nobody is going to take anything you say with a grain of seriousness," the recently reelected 83-year-old said to his colleagues.

"They will say to you, 'You're concerned about China, you're concerned about Russia, you're concerned about Iran.' Well, why are you funding the starvation of children in Gaza right now?"

The three resolutions he put forward garnered only about 20 votes, meaning dozens of fellow Democrats declined to vote in favor.

US diplomat Amos Hochstein has arrived in Israel after a stop in Beirut, Lebanon, to discuss a cease-fire deal drafted in Washington. 

The truce deals with the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, not with Hamas in Gaza.

Hochstein is due to meet personally with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"What we have seen is [Israel] accomplish a number of important objectives," US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters ahead of the meeting.

"We have seen [Israel], over the course of the last couple months, really be quite effective in clearing out Hezbollah infrastructure close to the border, which is why we believe we're in the place that we can get a diplomatic resolution now," Miller added.

According to the United Nations, some 3,000 Lebanese civilians have been killed as tensions have once again flared between Hezbollah and Israel in recent months.

es/sms (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)