War Crimes

In its latest update on Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that humanitarian supplies are nearing total depletion since Israel imposed a complete blockade on commercial goods and humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip on March 2. More than 2 million people remain trapped, bombed and starving inside the territory, while Israeli attacks on civilians, aid workers, UN personnel, hospitals and ambulances continue with impunity.

Despite the tactical pauses that Israel introduced last week to allow some safe passage for humanitarian convoys, the amount of aid that has entered the Gaza Strip remains vastly insufficient for its starving population. United Nations aid trucks continue to face impediments on their way to deliver aid, while UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) continue to face obstructions that prevent them from bringing in and distributing aid at scale.

The warring parties in Sudan have committed an appalling range of harrowing human rights violations and international crimes, including many that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, United Nations-appointed experts said on Friday. They called for the immediate deployment of an "independent and impartial force" with a mandate to protect civilians.

Amid reports of increased Israeli military operations across Gaza City on Friday, United Nations aid agencies reiterated their urgent warnings about the ongoing famine and rising preventable diseases linked to the catastrophic living conditions in the war-torn enclave. Famine is currently occurring in the Gaza Governorate and is expected to spread to Deir al Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September.

As Israel's war on Gaza continues, the United States on Wednesday vetoed the latest resolution on the Gaza Strip in the United Nations Security Council, which demanded an immediate, unconditional and lasting ceasefire as well as full humanitarian access for civilians. The most recent veto comes in the face of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe raging for more than a year in the territory, where people continue to die from violence, disease and starvation, with the threat of famine looming.

With the support of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Israel and Lebanon have signed a ceasefire agreement after more than 13 months of conflict. Under the agreement, Hezbollah troops will move north of the Litani River and Israeli troops will withdraw from southern Lebanon. The Israeli cabinet voted on Tuesday to approve the ceasefire agreement, which came into effect at 4am local time on Wednesday.

According to estimates, more than 14,500 children have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) since October 2023, when Israel began its war in the Gaza Strip, which is characterized by grave war crimes, crimes against humanity and other gross violations of international humanitarian law. The real number of child fatalities is feared to be much higher, as thousands of children are reported missing and presumed dead.

According to health officials in Gaza, Israeli forces have killed more than 55,000 Palestinians — most of whom were children, women, and the elderly — and injured more than 127,000 others in their attacks on the Gaza Strip since October 2023. However, the true numbers of fatalities are estimated to be much higher. The identified dead include more than 15,000 children, 463 aid workers, 319 UN staff members, 1,580 healthcare workers, and 224 journalists.

Israel's relentless bombardment from the air, land and sea continues to be reported across much of the Gaza Strip, causing further civilian deaths, injuries, displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure. The United Nations has expressed grave concern over Israel's latest evacuation order for large parts of Khan Younis, which covers about one-third of the Gaza Strip and affects up to 250,000 civilians.

A dozen independent United Nations experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, expressed alarm Thursday about the escalation of violence in Sudan, particularly sexual violence committed in the conflict, primarily by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In a statement, they said gender-based violence (GBV), including sexual violence, is used as a tool of war and no longer concentrated in Khartoum or Darfur, but has spread to other parts of the country, such as Kordofan.

Sources in Iran report steadily rising numbers of fatalities from Israeli attacks. More than 450 people have reportedly been killed in the country, including dozens of women and children, and more than 1,400 people have reportedly been injured in Israeli airstrikes and missile attacks that began early Friday. Meanwhile, Israeli health authorities say that 24 people have been killed and more than 600 injured by Iranian counter-strikes since Friday.

The United States government this week labelled the actions of Sudan's paramilitary forces as genocide and imposed sanctions on its leader for the "horrific, systematic atrocities" committed by his forces in a war that has gripped Sudan for nearly two years, killing tens of thousands of people and driving more than 12 million from their homes. Yet at the same time, the US administration denies that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are being committed in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip, which is a war crime, the leading international human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Monday. In a statement, HRW stressed that Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that the catastrophic situation in the Gaza Strip is the worst it has been since the war began in October 2023. Atrocities continue on a massive scale, and the limited amount of aid entering Gaza falls far short of what is needed to support the more than two million starving civilians following 80 days of a total Israeli blockade of all commercial and humanitarian supplies.

A ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas took effect in the Gaza Strip on Sunday at 11:15 am local time, after more than 470 days of war that have devastated the tiny territory and left its two million inhabitants in dire need of the basics to survive. According to the United Nations, more than 630 trucks of humanitarian goods entered Gaza on the first day of the truce, with at least 300 of them going to the northern Gaza Strip, which has been cut off from aid for months.

The United Nations and international aid agencies are warning that the lives of millions of people in Sudan are at risk as the world turns its attention away from the enormous humanitarian needs facing the war-torn country. Today, Sudan entered a year of war that many have called the world's largest human-made crisis, with half the population in need of life-saving assistance, tens of thousands killed and injured, and millions uprooted from their homes.