Region

WASHINGTON — The United States halted a shipment of bombs to Israel last week after it failed to address Washington's concerns over plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a senior US official said on Tuesday.

"We have paused one shipment of weapons last week. It consists of 1,800 2,000-lb [907kg]bombs and 1,700 500-lb [226kg] bombs," the senior official in President Joe Biden's administration said on condition of anonymity.

"We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment," the official added.

Biden's administration made the decision when it appeared Israel was on the verge of a major ground operation into Rafah, which Washington has strongly opposed.

Israeli and US officials had been discussing alternatives but "those discussions are ongoing and have not fully addressed our concerns", the senior US official said.

“As Israeli leaders seemed to approach a decision point on such an operation, we began to carefully review proposed transfers of particular weapons to Israel that might be used in Rafah. This began in April.”

The US official said Washington was “especially focused” on the use of the heaviest 2,000-lb bombs “and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza”.

The US State Department is still reviewing other weapons transfers, including the use of precision bomb kits known as JDAMs, added the official.

Israel said it reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing to humanitarian aid for Gaza on Wednesday, four days after closing it in response to a rocket attack that killed four soldiers.

“Trucks from Egypt carrying humanitarian aid, including food, water, shelter equipment, medicine and medical equipment donated by the international community are already arriving at the crossing,” the army said in a joint statement with COGAT, the defence ministry body that oversees Palestinian civil affairs.

The supplies will be transferred to the Gaza side of the crossing after undergoing inspection, the statement released at around 9:15 am (6:15 GMT) said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees however said the Kerem Shalom crossing remained closed.

“The crossing is still not open,” UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told AFP at about 10:40 am (7:40 GMT).

The military said the Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza was also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory.

The Kerem Abu Salem crossing was closed after a Hamas rocket attack killed four soldiers and wounded more than a dozen on Sunday.

On Tuesday, Israeli troops seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt after launching an incursion into the eastern sector of the city.

The UNRWA spokeswoman said the Rafah crossing too remained closed.

“We are calling for their reopening. We normally get fuel through Rafah not Karem Abu Salem ” Touma said.

“There’s not been humanitarian supplies for the past three days. We have started rationing fuel,” she said, adding Gaza needed 300,000 litres  of fuel a day for humanitarian purposes.

On Tuesday, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said the two crossings were a “lifeline” for delivering aid to Gaza.

“Through them we bring critical supplies and fuel for humanitarian use. They need to be reopened without any delay,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

Israel’s staunchest ally the United States too called for the reopening of the two crossings.

BEIRUT — Israeli bombardment of south Lebanon in seven months of cross-border hostilities with Hizbollah has caused more than $1.5 billion in damage, a Lebanese official said on Wednesday.

Lebanon's powerful Hizbollah movement began attacking Israel in support of ally Hamas a day after the Palestinian fighter group's unprecedented October 7 surprise attack on Israel that sparked war in the Gaza Strip.

Hizbollah has stepped up its attacks in recent weeks, while Israel's military has struck deeper into Lebanese territory, saying it has targeted fighters and "infrastructure" used by the Iran-backed group.

Lebanon's Southern Council, an official body tasked with assessing the destruction, has estimated that since October 8, the cost of "damage to buildings and institutions stands at more than one billion dollars".

Infrastructure, including water, electricity, roads and health services have also suffered damage estimated at around an additional $500 million, according to the figures provided by Council Chief Hashem Haidar.

The information used to make the assessment was mostly gathered by "our teams on the ground", Haidar said.

With the hostilities ongoing, the estimates do not include all the destruction in particularly hard-to-reach areas, where the council relies on "engineers and municipality chiefs and local officials" for information, he added.

The Southern Council estimates that some 1,700 buildings have been completely destroyed, while around 14,000 have been damaged.

Emergency personnel have reported huge damage and villages emptied of residents.

The International Organisation for Migration says more than 93,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon, while Israel has evacuated tens of thousands of people from swathes of the country’s north.

Many journalists have been reluctant to travel to Lebanon’s border areas due to the heavy bombardment, while damage to some roads makes reporting trips more difficult.

The bombardment has also impacted farmland and livelihoods, with Lebanese authorities accusing Israel of using incendiary white phosphorus bombs that have triggered fires.

Authorities are waiting for a ceasefire in order to better assess the damage, but potential compensation procedures remain vague in a country suffering a crushing four-year economic crisis.

After Israel and Hizbollah fought a devastating war in 2006, Gulf countries and Iran helped with reconstruction efforts, and Lebanese officials in recent months have expressed hope for foreign support this time around as well.

The cross-border violence has killed at least 390 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.

Israel says 13 soldiers and nine civilians have been killed on its side of the border.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — The EU on Tuesday announced $125 million for NGOs and UN agencies helping people in Yemen, a day after aid groups appealed for billions to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the country.

The money is directed at the "most vulnerable in Yemen", the European Commission said after a Brussels meeting bringing together donors, UN officials and non-governmental organisations.

On Monday, nearly 200 aid groups appealed for funds to bridge a $2.3 billion shortfall in assistance for Yemen, where more than half the 34 million population needs help after nine years of war.

The EU commitment was part of a broader pledge agreed Tuesday in Brussels, yet to be made public.

But the Norwegian Refugee Council, which co-signed this week's aid appeal, said the total fell far short, sending "a bad signal that one of the worst humanitarian crises remains neglected".

"Today marks a missed opportunity for the international community to take meaningful steps towards pulling Yemenis back from the brink of severe hunger and widespread disease," said Samah Hadid, the group's head of advocacy for the Middle East and North Africa.

"NRC urges the international community to step up," she said.

Yemen has been gripped by conflict since the Iran-backed Houthis overran the capital Sanaa in 2014, triggering the Saudi-led military intervention in support of the government the following year.

Hundreds of thousands have died in the fighting or from indirect causes such as a lack of food, according to the United Nations.

Hostilities slowed considerably in April 2022, when a six-month UN-brokered ceasefire came into effect, and they have remained at a low level since.

Only $435 million of the $2.7 billion called for in Yemen’s 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan requirement had been raised until now, aid groups said, warning of threats including food insecurity, cholera and unexploded ordnance.

Brussels stressed the EU contribution would be “channelled exclusively through the EU’s humanitarian partners, including UN agencies and NGOs actively involved in the response”.

The EU commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, who chaired Tuesday’s aid meeting, said: “It is our duty to provide life-saving assistance to those in need and ensure more sustained support from the humanitarian and development communities.”

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Israel sent tanks into Rafah in southern Gaza, seizing control of the border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, an operation the UN said denied it access to the key humanitarian passage.

The military's thrust into the eastern sector of the city packed with displaced civilians came with negotiators and mediators due in Cairo in the latest effort towards a hostage release and ceasefire in the seven-month-old war.

A senior Hamas official, requesting anonymity to discuss the negotiations, warned that it would be Israel's "last chance" to free the estimated 128 captives still held in the Palestinian territory, including 35 the military says are dead.

A Hamas delegation was headed "shortly" to Cairo, the official said. Israel has said it would also send negotiators and mediator Qatar announced it was dispatching a team as well.

The long-threatened Rafah operation began hours after Hamas announced late Monday it had accepted a truce proposal, prompting cheering crowds to take to the streets despite Israel saying it was "far" from plans it had previously agreed to.

Rafah resident Abu Aoun Al Najjar said the "indescribable joy" following the Hamas statement and hopes for an end to the war were short-lived.

"It turned out to be a bloody night," he told AFP, as more Israeli strikes and bombardment "stole our joy".

Army footage showed tanks flying the Israeli flag taking "operational control" of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, the military said, in a deployment that had a "very limited scope against very specific targets".

UN humanitarian office spokesman Jens Laerke said Israel had denied it access to both Rafah and Kerem Abu Salem — the other main Gaza aid crossing, on the border with Israel — with only “one day of fuel available” inside the besieged territory.

Unless fuel was allowed in, “it would be a very effective way of putting the humanitarian operation in its grave”, he warned.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel to “stop any escalation” and to “immediately” reopen the crossings.

“The closure of both... crossings is especially damaging to an already dire humanitarian situation”, Guterres said, warning that “a full-scale assault on Rafah will be a human catastrophe”.

‘Permanent ceasefire’

Overnight, heavy bombardments rocked Rafah, an AFP correspondent reported. The Kuwaiti hospital said it had received the bodies of 23 people and the Najjar hospital recorded another four killed.

Later, Hamas’s armed wing said it fired rockets at Israeli troops at Kerem Abu Salem, two days after four Israeli soldiers were killed there in an attack it also claimed.

The Israeli army alleged the latest attack came from Rafah.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, and Qatar, a US ally that also hosts Hamas leaders, have taken the lead in the ceasefire negotiations.

Hamas on Monday said it had told Egyptian and Qatari officials of its “approval of their proposal regarding a ceasefire”.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the proposal was “far from Israel’s essential demands”, but the government would still send negotiators for talks.

In the meantime, it added, “Israel is continuing the operation in Rafah to exert military pressure on Hamas in order to advance the release of our hostages”.

Close Israeli ally the United States said it was “reviewing” the Hamas response.

Hamas member Khalil Al Hayya told the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel that the proposal agreed to by Hamas involved a three-phase truce.

It included a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the return of Palestinians displaced by the war and a hostage-prisoner exchange, with the goal of a “permanent ceasefire”, he said.

International alarm

International alarm has been building about the consequences of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah, where the United Nations says 1.4 million people are sheltering.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed concern that an attack on Rafah began despite warnings from the European Union and the United States.

“I am afraid that this is going to cause again a lot of casualties, civilian casualties,” he said.

Egypt urged Israel to “exercise the utmost restraint”, while the Organization for Islamic Cooperation condemned Israel’s “criminal aggression”.

In a conversation with Netanyahu on Monday, US President Joe Biden restated “his clear position” opposing an invasion of Rafah, the White House said.

Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to send ground troops into Rafah regardless of any truce, saying Israel needs to root out remaining Hamas forces.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it had appealed to several countries to “exert your influence on the Israeli government”.

In a message to ambassadors of governments with citizens among the hostages, it asked them to push for an agreement “while a tangible opportunity for the release of the hostages is on the table”.

Israel’s military on Monday told those in eastern Rafah to head for the coastal “expanded humanitarian area” at Al Mawasi.

But aid groups said Al-Mawasi was not ready for such an influx.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock urged “protection” for civilians in Rafah.

“A million people cannot simply vanish into thin air,” she said in a post on X, calling for “more humanitarian aid urgently”.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had begun discharging patients from a field hospital in Rafah and was preparing “for a possible evacuation”.

“This offensive is... going to further aggravate the damage to the health system, which is barely functioning,” an MSF statement said.

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Israel's military on Monday called for the evacuation of Palestinians from eastern Rafah ahead of a ground invasion of the city, as Gaza aid officials said Israeli jets struck two areas where the warning had been issued.

The evacuation call followed intensified disagreement between Israel and Hamas over the Islamist group's demands to end the seven-month war, during weekend talks in Cairo.

US President Joe Biden "reiterated his clear position" to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after Israel defied US warnings and told Palestinians to evacuate part of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the White House said.

Netanyahu meanwhile "agreed to ensure the Kerem Shalom crossing is open for humanitarian assistance for those in need", it added in a readout of their call, after Israel closed the key Gaza border crossing following a Hamas rocket attack.

Consultations between two other mediators, the United States and Qatar, were expected on Monday in Doha but state-linked media in Egypt said negotiations had stalled after a rocket strike killed four Israeli soldiers on Sunday.

Netanyahu has vowed to send ground troops in against Hamas fighters in Rafah regardless of any truce, and despite concerns from the United States, other countries and aid groups.

The "limited" and temporary evacuation order aimed "to get people out of harm's way" and followed the deadly rocket fire that Israel's military said came from an area adjacent to Rafah.

Gazan civil defence and aid officials said on Monday that Israeli jets had struck Al Shuka and Al Salam, among other areas, both of which were told to evacuate the day before.

The main aid group in Gaza, UNRWA, said “an Israeli offensive in Rafah would mean more civilian suffering and deaths”.

It added that it “is not evacuating”.

When asked how many people should move, a military spokesman said: “The estimate is around 100,000 people.”

However, Ossama Al Kahlut, a Palestine Red Crescent representative in east Rafah, said the designated evacuation zone hosts around 250,000 people, many of whom are already uprooted from elsewhere in Gaza. 

‘Where can we go?’ 

One resident, Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar, 36, said the area his family was told to seek refuge in “does not have enough room for us to make tents” because it is already full of displaced people.

“Where we can go?” he asked AFP.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said Israel had yet to present “a credible plan” to protect civilians during the ground invasion that it has threatened for weeks.

Without it, Washington “can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah”, Blinken said.

And on Monday EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell called the evacuation orders “unacceptable”. They “portend the worst: more war and famine”, he said, urging Israel to “renounce” a ground offensive.

The French foreign ministry said it was “strongly opposed” to an offensive on Rafah.

Jean-Raphael Poitou, Middle East coordinator for the Action Against Hunger charity, told AFP that the areas now opened for evacuees had previously been “closed because they were considered dangerous”.

Gaza’s bloodiest-ever war began following Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel estimates that 128 of the hostages abducted by militants on October 7 remain in Gaza, including 35 whom the military says are dead.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has conducted a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,735 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

About 1.2 million people are sheltering in Rafah, according to the World Health Organisation.

In a statement, the Israeli military appealed for residents in the city’s eastern zone to move to the “expanded humanitarian area” at Al Mawasi on Gaza’s nearby coast.

The area “includes field hospitals, tents and increased amounts of food, water, medication and additional supplies”, it said.

Repeatedly bombed 

Soon after the war started, Israel told Palestinians living in northern Gaza to move to “safe zones” in the south — including Rafah near the Egyptian border.

But Rafah has been repeatedly bombed from the air — including on Monday following the evacuation order — and Palestinians frequently say that nowhere in Gaza is safe.

In late March, Gaza’s health ministry said at least 12 people were killed when an air strike hit a tent for displaced people in Al Mawasi.

The Israeli military told AFP at the time that it was looking into the report.

Medics and first responders said Israeli air strikes killed 16 people in Rafah on Sunday. The strikes came hours after Hamas rocket fire killed the Israeli soldiers in the Kerem Shalom border crossing area between southern Israel and Gaza.

The strike led Israeli authorities to close the crossing, used to deliver aid into Gaza, and in response the military said its air force destroyed launchers from which the projectiles were fired.

Al-Qahera News, linked to Egyptian intelligence services, cited a high-level source on Monday as saying the rocket strike has “caused truce negotiations to bog down”.

Holocaust Remembrance Day 

Despite the evacuation order, Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou told AFP the movement “will continue the negotiations positively and with an open heart”.

CIA director Bill Burns, a mediator in the talks, is expected in Doha to meet with Qatar’s prime minister for “emergency” discussions, a source with knowledge of the truce talks told AFP on Sunday.

The source, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the meeting would try “to see if the talks can be brought back on track”.

A Hamas official close to the negotiations said Sunday the group’s negotiators were headed from Cairo to Doha for “consultations”, after the weekend round failed to produce a breakthrough.

Hamas negotiators are then due back in Cairo on Tuesday, Al Qahera News said.

Talks took place Sunday without an Israeli delegation present.

Netanyahu, however, made his voice heard.

Speaking at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Jerusalem, he denounced a “volcano of anti-Semitism” and international criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.

“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” Netanyahu said.

The Qatar-based political chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, accused Netanyahu of sabotaging the talks, which Netanyahu’s office on Monday called “an absolute lie”.

Joost Hiltermann, Middle East and North Africa programme director at the International Crisis Group think tank, told AFP that both the Hamas rocket fire on Sunday, and Israel’s evacuation order, can be seen in the context of the truce talks.

“Whenever there’s a breakdown, then the violence escalates,” he said.

EL AMRA, Tunisia — Hundreds of Tunisians rallied Saturday in the town of El Amra to protest makeshift camps for migrants primarily from sub-Saharan African countries, an AFP correspondent said.

The demonstration in the small town in central Tunisia follows recent crackdowns by authorities on similar encampments in the capital Tunis and other areas, often after complaints from local residents.

In El Amra, protesters called for the "departure" of migrants and the "quick" eviction of the thousands estimated to be staying there, the correspondent said.

Lawmaker Tarek Mahdi said that the "immediate solution" should be to get migrants to "leave urban areas and cities".

The situation has become “unacceptable” and “the authorities must find a solution”, said Mahdi, who represents El Amra in parliament.

He added that other countries should help Tunisia to deal with a “very significant flow” of migrants.

The town is located about 40 kilometres north of Sfax, a key departure point for Europe-bound sea journeys from where migrants had been forcibly removed late last year.

Many migrants have fled to towns like El Amra, setting up encampments before they can make the perilous Mediterranean crossing, as Tunisian authorities and the European Union have ramped up efforts to curb irregular migration.

A surge of anti-migrant violence last year, following remarks by President Kais Saied who painted “illegal” foreigners as a demographic threat, has also pushed many out of main cities and into smaller towns.

Migrants attempting the sea crossing in search of a better life in Europe often aim to reach Italy, whose Lampedusa Island lies some 150 kilometres away from Sfax, Tunisia’s second city.

In recent weeks, authorities raided several encampments, tearing down tents and expelling migrants.

The non-governmental Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights said that authorities in Tunis on Friday cleared encampments and expelled hundreds of asylum seekers, migrants and refugees, sending them in buses to a western area near the Algerian border.

In a statement, the interior ministry said “security measures” had been taken to “deal with attacks on public and private property”.

Last month, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Tunisia for a fourth time in less than a year to sign deals aiming to curb migration.

A day before her visit, Saied said that Tunisia must not become “a country of transit or settlement” for the tens of thousands of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe every year.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Top US diplomat Antony Blinken urged Hamas to accept a truce in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to send troops into its far southern city of Rafah.

Washington has heightened pressure on all sides to reach a ceasefire — a message pushed by Blinken, who was on his seventh regional tour since the Gaza war broke out in October.

An Israeli official told AFP the government "will wait for answers until Wednesday night", and then "make a decision" whether to send a delegation to indirect talks being brokered by US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Cairo.

The Palestinian militant group said it was considering a plan for a 40-day ceasefire and the exchange of scores of hostages for larger numbers of Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas, whose envoys returned from Cairo talks to their base in Qatar, would "discuss the ideas and the proposal", said a Hamas source, adding: "We are keen to respond as quickly as possible."

Blinken put the ball squarely in Hamas's court.

"There is a very strong proposal on the table right now. Hamas needs to say yes, and needs to get this done," he said.

But analysts questioned whether Hamas would sign up to another temporary ceasefire like the week-long truce that saw more than 100 hostages released in November, knowing that Israeli troops could resume their onslaught as soon as it was over.

"I'm pessimistic about the option of Hamas agreeing to a deal that doesn't have a permanent ceasefire baked into it," said Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst on Israel-Palestine at the International Crisis Group.

Zonszein said the three countries brokering the truce talks had their own reasons for trying to bounce the warring parties into a deal.

"The US and Egypt and Qatar all have very strong interests of their own, for various reasons, why they're trying very hard now to pressure both sides into agreeing to a deal.

"And I think they believe that if they're able to get an initial deal and a pause, that they can try to build on that," he said.

Hours before Blinken landed in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu fired a shot across his bows, vowing to send Israeli ground troops into Rafah despite repeated US warnings of the potential for heavy casualties among the 1.5 million civilians sheltering in the city.

“We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there with or without a deal,” the right-wing premier told hostage families, his office said.

Ahead of what promised to be a difficult meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Blinken too met privately with hostage relatives in Tel Aviv.

In rare scenes for the top US diplomat, who has faced furore at home and abroad over the administration’s support for Israel in its campaign against Hamas, Blinken was greeted outside his Tel Aviv hotel by Israeli demonstrators waving US flags.

Blinken told them that freeing the hostages was “at the heart of everything we’re trying to do”.

The estimates that 129 Israelis remain captive in Gaza, 34 of whom are presumed dead.

Many of their families have expressed hope that US pressure may force Netanyahu to agree a deal for their release.

More routes for aid 

On the previous leg of his regional tour in Jordan, Blinken said a Gaza truce and the redoubling of aid deliveries went hand in hand.

A truce is “the most effective way to relieve the suffering” of civilians in Gaza, he told reporters near Amman.

Blinken saw off a first Jordanian truck convoy of aid heading to Gaza through the Erez crossing reopened by Israel.

“It is real and important progress, but more still needs to be done,” he said.

UN agencies have warned that without urgent intervention, famine looms in Gaza, particularly in northern areas which are hardest to reach.

A US-built floating pier on Gaza’s coast is expected to be completed later this week, said Cyprus, the departure point for the planned “maritime corridor”.

Blinken said the pier would “significantly increase the assistance” but was not “a substitute” for greater overland access.

In northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, across from Erez crossing, 24-year-old farmer Yussef Abu Rabih was replanting plots he said had been “completely destroyed” by the fighting.

“We decided to return to farming despite difficult conditions and scarce resources” after suffering “severe hunger”, he told AFP.

‘Unbearable escalation’ 

Washington has strongly backed its ally Israel but also pressured it to refrain from a ground invasion of Rafah, which is packed with displaced civilians.

Calev Ben-Dor, a former analyst for the Israeli foreign ministry and now deputy editor for specialised review Fathom, told AFP that Netanyahu’s “Rafah comments likely have more to do with trying to keep his coalition intact, rather than operational plans in the near term”.

The prime minister “is feeling the squeeze between the Biden administration” and far-right members of his government who have vehemently opposed the proposed truce, Ben-Dor said.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said an Israeli assault on Rafah would “be an unbearable escalation, killing thousands more civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee”.