Region

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Health officials in Gaza reported on Monday more than 24,000 deaths in the war with Israel which has sent shockwaves across the region, as the Israeli bombardment of the strip passed the grim 100-day milestone.

Deadly violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and along Israel's border with Lebanon as well as fighting between US forces and Iran-backed Yemeni rebels in the Red Sea have raised fears of an escalation beyond the Gaza Strip.

The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe for the 2.4 million people in the besieged strip, the United Nations and aid groups warn, and reduced much of the territory to rubble.

The health ministry in Gaza reported more than 60 "martyrs" and dozens more wounded overnight, in what the group's media office described as "intense" Israeli bombardment across Gaza.

The Hamas government media office said two hospitals, a girls' school and "dozens" of homes were hit overnight.

Hospitals in Gaza have been hit repeatedly since the war erupted, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) says most of them are no longer functioning.

The latest strikes hit the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, as well as areas around Gaza City, the Hamas media office said.

The UN says more than three months of fighting have displaced roughly 85 per cent of the territory's population, crowded into shelters and struggling to get food, water, fuel and medical care.

"There's no food, no water, no heating. We are dying from the cold," said Mohammad Kahil, displaced from northern Gaza to Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said people in Gaza were “living in hell”, echoing earlier UN warnings of a fast-approaching famine.

In a joint statement on Sunday, the WHO, World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF said “a fundamental step change in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is urgently needed”.

They called for “safer, faster” supply routes to be opened, warning that the current levels of aid “fall far short of what is needed to prevent a deadly combination of hunger, malnutrition and disease”.

The WFP said an aid convoy brought food to the territory’s north on Thursday, the first such delivery since a one-week truce ended on December 1.

Cindy McCain, the UN agency’s director, said: “People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food. Every hour puts countless lives at risk.”

Israel has faced international pressure over surging civilian casualties in Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under intense domestic pressure to account for political and security failings surrounding the October 7 attacks.

On the war’s 100th day on Sunday, hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv for events urging action to rescue the remaining hostages.

“One hundred days and they are still abandoned there, 100 days and there is no sign of their return,” said Amit Zach, a graphic designer.

A Hamas spokesman on Sunday said most of the hostages held in Gaza are likely to have been killed, blaming the Israeli leadership for their fate. The claim cannot be independently verified.

 ‘Peace’ efforts 

Violence involving regional allies of Iran-backed Hamas, considered a “terrorist” group by the United States and the European Union, has surged since the war began.

In Yemen, the US military said its fighter jets had shot down a cruise missile fired at an American destroyer in the Red Sea.

Attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who say they act in solidarity with Gaza, have disrupted shipping in the vital maritime trade route, triggering strikes in recent days by US and British forces.

On the Israel-Lebanon border, Israeli forces and Hamas ally Hizbollah have traded near daily fire.

A missile strike on Sunday killed two Israeli civilians, medics said, and three militants who had crossed in from Lebanon died in a gun battle, according to the army.

Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said Israel “has not achieved any real victory” in Gaza and will be forced to end the fighting and negotiate a diplomatic solution.

International efforts to avoid escalation on Sunday saw China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visiting Egypt, where he called for “an international summit for peace” and Palestinian statehood.

Australia’s top diplomat Penny Wong is due in Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and the United Arab Emirates this week to “support international diplomatic efforts towards a durable peace in the Middle East”, her office said.

AL JAZIRA STATE, Sudan — Bombardments by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) killed seven civilians on Sunday in the White Nile state village of Al Qutaynah, activists said.

Sudan, in northeast Africa, has been devastated by a war between feuding generals since April last year, and the strike in White Nile state is the latest indication of fighting spreading southwards from the capital Khartoum.

As it does, more people are forced to flee in a country which has the world’s largest number of displaced, at more than 7.4 million, according to the United Nations.

The attack, 75 kilometres south of Khartoum, was reported by a local group known as a resistance committee, which said the fatalities came “in bombardments by the air force”.

Such resistance committees once organised pro-democracy protests but now provide aid during the war, which has left more than half the population in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN.

Fighting erupted on April 15 between the head of the armed forces Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, an analyst group, puts the death toll at more than 13,000.

In adjacent Al Jazira state, hundreds of thousands of refugees have been displaced again — after earlier seeking safety from battles in Khartoum — as the RSF move south from the capital.

“The expansion of fighting between the SAF and the RSF into parts of central and eastern Sudan — the country’s most important regions for crop production -- has driven a significant increase in humanitarian needs during the harvesting season,” the UN said in a report on Sunday.

White SAF controls the skies, the RSF has the streets of the capital Khartoum, nearly all of the western Darfur region and, with its push into Al Jazira state, shattered one of the country’s few remaining sanctuaries.

Diplomatic efforts to secure a negotiated peace, notably by the United States, Saudi Arabia and, most recently, the IGAD regional bloc, have so far failed.

TUNIS — Hundreds of Tunisians demonstrated on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the country's 2011 revolution that sparked the Arab Spring uprisings, and to demand the release of jailed opposition leaders.

They marched down the central thoroughfare of the capital Tunis waving the national flag, commemorating the day when president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali was ousted, which set off a series of uprisings across the Middle East.

"The spirit of January 14 is still here," said Moncef Araissia, a retiree who was among the several hundred protesters that AFP journalists estimated turned out for the demonstration.

"Our vision is still the same, despite some mistakes we made, and despite the coup that took place," he added, referring to President Kais Saied's sweeping power grab.

Saied was democratically elected in 2019, but two years later he sacked the government and suspended parliament. He later amended the constitution to further centralise power.

A number of his opponents are currently behind bars as the North African country prepares for presidential elections in December this year.

Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, leader of the National Salvation Front (FSN) opposition coalition, said the polls should not be conducted under conditions set by Saied.

"Candidates are in jail or have been threatened to prevent them from running, the election authority is under [Saied's] control... journalists are harassed and prosecuted," he added.

"This is not free competition."

Early last year, authorities arrested a number of Saied's political opponents and others opposed to the government, and they were later jailed over an alleged plot against the state.

Among them were Rached Ghannouchi, the 82-year-old leader of the opposition Ennahdha Party, and Jawhar Ben Mbarek, co-founder of the FSN.

Ghannouchi received a one-year prison sentence on terrorism-related charges in May.

At least 16 Tunisian journalists currently face trial, according to local media.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli troops on Sunday killed four militants who crossed in from Lebanon at a disputed border area, the army said as tensions surge on the 100th day of the Israeli war on Gaza.

Since Israel's war on the Gaza Strip erupted on October 7, the Israel-Lebanon border has seen near-daily exchanges of fire between Iran-backed Hizbollah militants and Israeli forces.

The Israeli forces said that troops patrolling a contested border area "identified a terrorist cell who crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory and fired at the forces".

"The soldiers engaged and responded with live fire, four terrorists were killed," the army said in a statement.

Tensions along the border spiked after the killing earlier this month of Hamas's deputy leader Saleh Al Aruri in a Beirut suburb, in a strike widely attributed to Israel.

Violence on the border since October 7 has killed 190 people, including more than 140 Hizbollah fighters and over 20 civilians including three journalists, according to an AFP tally.

In Israel's north, at least nine soldiers and four civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel and Hizbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.

CAIRO — China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on Sunday for the establishment of a Palestinian state and a ceasefire in Gaza, where 100 days of the Hamas-Israel war have killed thousands.

In a press conference with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry in Cairo, the top Chinese diplomat said "It is necessary to insist on the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign state of Palestine on the 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as its capital."

A joint statement from the two ministers urged an immediate end "to all acts of violence, killing and targeting of civilians and civilian establishments".

Shoukry and Wang called for "an international summit for peace to find a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Palestinian cause by ending the [Israeli] occupation and establishing an independent, contiguous Palestinian state".

The Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, seat of the Palestinian Authority, are separated by Israeli territory. Both were seized by Israel in the June War of 1967.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has previously called for an "international peace conference" to resolve the fighting.

China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and supportive of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Wang is currently on an African tour that will see him also visit Togo, Tunisia and Ivory Coast.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on all sides "not to escalate" the volatile situation in the Red Sea, his spokesman said on Friday after Washington and London launched strikes on Yemen's Huthi rebels.

The barrage of strikes early on Friday against the Houthis, who say they are acting in solidarity with Gaza, follow weeks of disruptive rebel attacks on Red Sea shipping and have stoked fears of the Hamas-Israel war spreading regionwide.

"The secretary-general further calls on all parties involved not to escalate even more the situation in the interest of peace and stability in the Red Sea and the wider region," said Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Later, Khaled Khiari, assistant secretary-general for the Middle East, told the UN Security Council "we are witnessing the cycle of violence that risks grave political security, economic and humanitarian repercussions in Yemen and the region".

"These developments in the Red Sea and the risk of exacerbating regional tensions are alarming," he said.

Russia's ambassador to the UN called the joint US-UK strikes on Yemen's Houthis "blatant armed aggression against another country".

"These states all carried out a mass strike on Yemeni territory. I'm not talking about an attack on some group within the country but an attack on the people of the country on the whole. Aircraft were used, warships and submarines," Vasily Nebenzya said of the US and British action, supported by allied countries.

But Washington's ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned that no countries' vessels were immune to the threat posed by Houthi rebels to shipping in the Red Sea.

“Whether your ship flies an American flag, or the flag of another nation... all of our ships are vulnerable,” she said.

“Without Iranian support, in violation of their obligations... the Houthis would struggle to effectively track and strike commercial vessels, navigating shipping lanes through the Red Sea.”

Britain’s ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward said London “took limited, necessary and proportionate action in self defence.”

“This operation took particular care to minimise risks to civilians,” she said.

AL JAZIRA STATE, Sudan — Sudan's army-aligned government on Saturday spurned an invitation to an east African summit and rebuked the United Nations for engaging with the commander of rival paramilitary forces.

Nine months after war broke out between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the army has been losing territory while paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo has been touring African capitals in a boost to his diplomatic standing.

Rejecting the invitation from east African bloc IGAD to a summit in Uganda on January 18 that is also to be attended by Daglo, Sudan's transitional sovereign council, headed by army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, insisted: "The events in Sudan are an internal matter."

The bloc has repeatedly attempted to mediate between Sudan's warring generals, but its efforts have been cold-shouldered by Burhan's government.

In contrast, Daglo, fresh from a tour of six African capitals, said on X, formerly Twitter, that he had accepted the invitation from IGAD and would be attending the summit in Uganda.

Analysts say the army chief is growing more and more isolated diplomatically, as his troops fail to halt RSF advances.

Burhan has reacted angrily to Daglo's growing diplomatic status, accusing African leaders who hosted him on his recent tour of complicity in atrocities against Sudanese civilians.

The war has killed more than 13,000 people, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project. Some 7.5 million civilians have fled the fighting, according to UN figures.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, torture and arbitrary detention of civilians.

The RSF has also specifically been accused of ethnically-motivated mass killings and rampant looting.

In the eastern city of Port Sudan, which is now home to Burhan’s government, acting Foreign Minister Ali Al Sadiq told newly arrived UN envoy Ramtane Lamamra that Sudan “rejects” a recent contact between UN chief Antonio Guterres and Daglo, according to a statement carried by official news agency SUNA.

Sadiq said he informed Lamamra that the UN chief’s phone call on Thursday served to “legitimise” Daglo, “the leader of a movement that has committed horrific violations that have been condemned by some UN institutions as well as the majority of the international community”.

Lamamra was named Guterres’s envoy for Sudan, after the termination of the UN mission to the country last month at the request of Burhan’s government.