Palestinian women mourn during the funeral ceremony of Palestinian people who were killed by the Israeli army on 7 January Photograph: Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images
Palestinian women mourn during the funeral ceremony of Palestinian people who were killed by the Israeli army on 7 January Photograph: Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images
UN experts on Monday demanded accountability for sexual violence allegedly carried out by Hamas militants against Israeli civilians during the 7 October attacks, saying that mounting evidence of rapes and genital mutilation point to possible crimes against humanity, Reuters reports.
Israeli authorities have opened an investigation into possible sexual crimes during the most deadly attack on Israel in its history. Hamas denies the abuses.
“The growing body of evidence about reported sexual violence is particularly harrowing,” two U.N.-appointed independent experts said in a statement on Monday.
These acts constitute gross violations of international law, amounting to war crimes which, given the number of victims and the extensive premeditation and planning of the attacks, may also qualify as crimes against humanity.
“Each and every victim deserves to be recognised, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or sex, and our role is to be their voice,” they added.
Israel has previously criticised the global body for not doing enough to address the issue as part of a bid to get greater recognition for the alleged crimes.
The two experts on torture and on executions – Alice Jill Edwards and Morris Tidball-Binz – have raised the issue with Hamas authorities, they said.
They have also written to Israel’s government and called for cooperation with their investigators.
Wissam Hassan al Tawil’s death follows the assassination by Israel last week in Beirut of Saleh al-Arouri, a killing which has escalated already febrile tensions between Hezbollah and Israel.
Hezbollah’s general secretary Hassan Nasrallah had already vowed that his movement was bound to retaliate for Arouri’s death, with the group describing a barrage of missiles targeting Israel on Saturday as “their first response.”
Typically Hezbollah supplies scant details over the circumstances and rank of fighters who are killed but in this case described Tawil as a commander.
However Lebanese security sources described Tawil as having played a key role in leading the Radwan forces operations in southern Lebanon.
Underlining his seniority, Hezbollah circulated pictures of Tawil with Hezbollah leaders including Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyeh, the group’s military commander who was killed in Syria in 2008.
Another photo showed him sitting next to the late leader of the Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, who killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad four years ago.
A security source, quoted by Reuters, described Tawil’s death as “a very painful strike” while another suggested his killing would inevitably lead to more escalation.
So far some 130 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in three months of fighting with Israel that began on 8 October, a day after the Hamas attack.
Israel has killed a senior military commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force in an air strike in southern Lebanon amid warnings from Lebanese security sources that the assassination could lead to a further escalation in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Shia armed movement.
The commander in the secretive force, which operates on the border, was identified by Hezbollah as Wissam Hassan al Tawil, who was killed in a strike on an SUV he was driving in the area around 6 kilometres from the border.
Hezbollah said Tawil had died “on the road to Jerusalem” - the phrase used by the Shiite Muslim movement for fighters killed by Israel.
Tawil is the most senior Hezbollah figure to have been killed in three months of escalating border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel triggered all-out war in Gaza and lower-intensity fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
This undated picture released by Hezbollah Military Media, shows senior Hezbollah commander Wissam Hassan al Tawil, right. Photograph: AP
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, discussed efforts to prevent the Gaza conflict from spreading during a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in Saudi Arabia on Monday, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Sri Lanka’s navy said on Monday it was joining a US-led maritime taskforce to protect international shipping against attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the AFP reports.
“We will be joining ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ led by the US navy,” naval spokesperson Gayan Wickramasuriya said, with the deployment of a patrol vessel crewed by more than 100 people.
Israel carrying out deadly strikes in Syria, military sources say
Israel is carrying out an unprecedented wave of deadly strikes in Syria targeting cargo trucks, infrastructure and people involved in Iran’s weapons lifeline to its proxies in the region, six sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The sources, including a Syrian military intelligence officer and a commander in the regional alliance backing Damascus, said Israel had shifted strategies following the 7 October attack by Hamas fighters into Israeli territory and the ensuing Israeli bombing campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.
Although Israel has struck Iran-linked targets in Syria for years, including areas where Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has been active, it is now unleashing deadlier, more frequent air raids against Iranian arms transfers and air defence systems in Syria, the sources said.
The commander in the regional alliance and two additional sources familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking said Israel had abandoned the unspoken “rules of the game” that previously characterised its strikes in Syria, and seemed “no longer cautious” about inflicting heavy casualties on Hezbollah there.
“They used to fire warning shots – they’d hit near the truck, our guys would get out of the truck, and then they’d hit the truck,” the commander said, describing Israeli raids on arms transfers handled by Hezbollah before 7 October.
“Now that’s over. Israel is now unleashing deadlier, more frequent air raids against Iranian arms transfers and air defence systems in Syria. They bomb everyone directly. They bomb to kill.”
The intensified air campaign has killed 19 Hezbollah members in Syria in three months – more than twice the rest of 2023 combined, according to a Reuters count. More than 130 Hezbollah fighters have also been killed by Israeli shelling of southern Lebanon in the same period.
The Israeli military did not respond to questions from Reuters about its escalating campaign. A senior Israeli official, briefing journalists on condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah had initiated this round of fighting with attacks on 8 October and that Israel’s strategy was one of retaliation.
Jordan’s King Abdullah said on Monday that Israel had created a whole generation of orphans by a “brutal” war in Gaza where he said more than 30,000 people, mostly women and children, had been killed or were missing as a result of the conflict, Reuters reports.
In remarks at the Kigali genocide memorial in Rwanda, where the monarch spoke of “unspeakable crimes” during that African conflict, Abdullah said a lesson to be drawn was that Israel’s “indiscriminate aggression” in Gaza would never guarantee its security. His remarks were carried on state media following a statement by the royal palace.
The Times of Israel is reporting that drone infiltration warnings have sounded for the second time in the past hour in northern Israel, close to Lebanon.
Hezbollah commander killed by Israel in Lebanon identified as Wissam al-Tawil
Associated Press has more detail on the Hezbollah commander who Israel appears to have killed in a strike inside Lebanon earlier today. [See 11.21 GMT]
Monday’s strike on a car killed a commander in a secretive Hezbollah force that operates along southern Lebanon, according to a Lebanese security official who spoke on condition of anonymity according to regulations. Hezbollah identified the slain fighter as Wissam al-Tawil without providing further details.
A Hezbollah rocket barrage hit a sensitive air traffic base in northern Israel on Saturday in one of the biggest attacks in three months of low-intensity fighting across the UN-drawn blue line that separates Lebanon and Israel. The militant group said was an “initial response” to the killing of Hamas’ deputy political leader Saleh Arouri in Beirut last week.
Al Jazeera notes that Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel in two televised addresses last week not to launch a full-scale war against it.
Kaamil Ahmed and Ruth Michaelson report that fixers with alleged links to Egyptian intelligence are making a fortune in “fees” from people hoping to exit through the Rafah crossing:
Very few Palestinians have been able to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing but those trying to get their names on the list of people permitted to exit daily say they are being asked to pay large “coordination fees” by a network of brokers and couriers with alleged links to the Egyptian intelligence services.
One Palestinian man in the US said he paid $9,000 three weeks ago to get his wife and children on the list. The family have been sheltering in schools since the 7 October attacks. On the day of travel, he was told his children’s names were not listed and he would have to pay an extra $3,000. He said the brokers were “trying to trade in the blood of Gazans”.
“It’s very frustrating and saddening,” he said. “They are trying to exploit people who are suffering, who are trying to get out of the hell in Gaza.” His family have yet to leave.
Egypt, a key regional player in negotiations on Gaza, has long resisted opening the Rafah crossing, fearing that millions of people would flee into the neighbouring Sinai peninsula. Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has said a mass influx of refugees from Gazawould set a precedent for displacing Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan.
A network of brokers, based in Cairo, helping Palestinians leave Gaza has operated around the Rafah border for years. But prices have surged since the start of the war, from $500 for each person.
The Guardian has spoken to a number of people who have been told they would have to pay between $5,000 and $10,000 each to leave the strip, with some launching crowdfunding campaigns to raise the money. Others were told they could leave sooner if they paid more.
