Gaza health officials said on Thursday that the death toll from the 13-month war between Israel and Hamas has surpassed 44,000, as the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes related to the Gaza war.
ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Hamas leader Al-Masri
According to the warrants, Netanyahu and Gallant could be arrested if they travel abroad. According to unconfirmed reports, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif. may have been killed by Israel.
The court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested the arrest warrants in May, saying there were reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant were “criminally responsible” for the mass starvation in Gaza, which constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On Thursday, the court said it found reasonable grounds to believe that Deif was responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, torture, rape and hostage-taking.
Gaza officials say death toll surpasses 44,000
Gaza health officials said Thursday that the death toll from the 13-month war between Israel and Hamas has surpassed 44,000.
Gaza’s health ministry did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it said more than half of the dead were women and children. The Israeli military claims to have killed more than 17,000 militants, without citing any evidence.
Meanwhile, a rocket fired from Lebanon killed a man and wounded two others in northern Israel on Thursday, according to Israel’s main ambulance service.
The Magen David Adom rescue service said paramedics found the body of a man in his 30s near a playground in the town of Nahariya, near the Lebanese border, after a rocket fired on Thursday.
Israel launched a war against Hamas after Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping another 251. About 100 hostages are still in Gaza, at least a third of them believed to be dead.
Most of the rest were released during a ceasefire last year. The Israeli offensive has caused severe destruction in the vast coastal territory and displaced 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
770 children arrested in the West Bank since last October
More than 770 children from the West Bank have been arrested since the start of Israel’s genocidal war against the Gaza Strip last October, human rights sources said.
On International Children’s Day, which is marked on November 20, the Commission for Detainees and Former Detainees and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said on Wednesday that in light of the ongoing crime of enforced disappearance of Gazans, there are no accurate figures on arrested children from Gaza.
They explained that at least 270 children remain detained in Israel’s Ofer and Megiddo prisons, as well as in other military detention camps, including new camps established following the escalation of Israeli arrest operations that have affected thousands of citizens.
Human rights groups indicated that arrested children have been subjected to severe beatings and threats, confirming that statistical studies and documented evidence indicate that arrested children have been subjected to some form of physical or psychological torture through a number of systematic means and methods that contravene human rights laws, international conventions and the rights of the child. According to them, some children were executed on the spot during detention operations.
Statistical studies have also documented a number of cases of children being used as hostages by the Israeli army to force their family members to surrender, noting that the most striking of these cases was the story of a three-year-old child from the town of Beit Liqya in Ramallah who was arrested for an hour and a half before being released when his father was forced to surrender.
