The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has vowed to step up efforts to investigate alleged war crimes, as he wrapped up a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, AFP reports.
Karim Khan stressed his visit was “not investigative in nature” but said he was able to speak to victims on both sides of the conflict.
“My office will further intensify its efforts to advance its investigations in relation to this situation,” Khan said. “Credible allegations of crimes during the current conflict should be the subject of timely, independent examination and investigation.”
Opening its doors in 2002, the ICC is the world’s only independent court set up to probe the gravest offences including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It opened an investigation in 2021 into Israel as well as Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups for possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories.
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Israeli forces have found 800 shafts leading to Hamas’ vast subterranean network of tunnels and bunkers since a Gaza ground operation began on Oct 27, and have destroyed more than half of them, the military has said, Reuters reports.
The Palestinian group said before the now eight-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip that it had hundreds of kilometres of tunnels — a network comparable in size to the New York subway system — to protect and serve as operational bases.
That has made them prime targets for Israeli air strikes with penetrating munitions and army engineers using mapping robots and exploding gel that can be poured into the passages.
“The tunnel shafts were located in civilian areas, many of which were near or inside civilian buildings and structures, such as schools, kindergartens, mosques and playgrounds,” the military said in a statement on Sunday.
The statement, summarising anti-tunnel operations so far, followed near-daily accounts to the media by troops who said they uncovered access shafts in civilian sites.
Of some 800 shafts discovered, the military said, 500 had been destroyed using a variety of operational methods, including by “detonation and by sealing off”. It added that “many miles” of main tunnel routes had also been destroyed.
On the sidelines of COP28, Interim Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar stated that Pakistan has been in the forefront of advocating for a ceasefire in order to put a stop to the “senseless violence which was perpetrated in very disproportionate manner by the government of Israel”.
“When we say immediately stop, not a single bullet could be afforded by anyone here in the region and beyond,” he said.
He said that if the violence did not cease then it can engulf the region “maybe Egypt, Syria, Jordan and probably there would not be any limit to that”.
“The creation of humanitarian corridor is the second most important thing and there are diversified views and Pakistan does understand that,” he said.
Pope Francis has said he was saddened the temporary truce in the Gaza Strip had been broken and urged those involved to reach a new ceasefire deal as soon as possible, AFP reports.
Speaking in Italian, the pontiff said: “There is so much suffering in Gaza.”
He said the occupied Palestinian territory lacked even essential supplies, adding that the situation there and in Israel was “serious”.
Even as it tries to recover hostages through indirect talks with Hamas and army operations in the Gaza Strip, Israel has been declaring some of the missing as dead in captivity, a measure designed to grant anxious relatives a measure of closure.
According to Reuters, a three-person medical committee has been poring over videos from the October 7 rampage by Palestinian fighters in southern Israel for signs of lethal injuries among those abducted, and cross-referencing with the testimony of hostages freed during a week-long Gaza truce that ended.
That can suffice to determine that a hostage has died, even if no doctor has formally pronounced this over his or her body, said Hagar Mizrahi, a health ministry official who heads the panel created in response to a crisis now in its third month.
“Designation of death is never an easy matter, and certainly not in the situation embroiling us,” she told Israel’s Kan radio.
Her committee, she said, addresses “the desire of the families of loved ones abducted to Gaza to know as much as possible”.
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Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip have sought shelter in an ever-shrinking area of the south as Israel stepped up its bombing from air, sea and land across the enclave, Reuters reports.
Bombardments were concentrated on Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, residents said. Hospitals were struggling to cope with the flow of wounded, they said.
The renewed warfare followed the collapse on Friday of a seven-day temporary pause in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas to allow an exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
It took place despite growing calls from the United States — Israel’s closest ally — for Israel to avoid further harm to Palestinian civilians.
