JERUSALEM: The Israeli military on Wednesday said it had uncovered a major Hamas command center in the heart of Gaza City, inflicting what it described as a serious blow to the Islamic militant group as pressure grows on Israel to scale back its devastating military offensive in the coastal enclave.
The army said it had exposed the center of a vast underground network used by Hamas to move weapons, militants and supplies throughout the Gaza Strip. Israel has said destroying the tunnels is a major objective of the offensive.
The announcement came as Hamas’ top leader arrived in Egypt for talks aimed at brokering a temporary ceasefire and a new deal for Hamas to swap Israeli hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israeli leaders have vowed to press ahead with the two-month-old offensive, launched in response to a bloody cross-border attack by Hamas in October that killed some 1,200 people and saw 240 others taken hostage.
The offensive has devastated much of northern Gaza, killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians, and driven some 1.9 million people — nearly 85 percent of the population — from their homes. The widespread destruction and heavy civilian death toll has drawn increasing international calls for a ceasefire.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has continued to support Israel’s right to defend itself while also urging greater effort to protect Gaza’s civilians.
But in some of the toughest American language yet, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called on Israel to scale back its operation.
“It’s clear that the conflict will move and needs to move to a lower intensity phase,” Blinken said. He said the US wants to see “more targeted operations” with smaller levels of forces focused on specific targets, such as Hamas’ leaders and the group’s tunnel network.
“As that happens, I think you’ll see as well, the harm done to civilians also decrease significantly,” he said.
His comments were more pointed than statements by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who in a visit to Israel this week said the US would not dictate any timeframes to its ally.
TUNNEL NETWORK
The Israeli military escorted Israeli reporters into Palestine Square in the heart of Gaza City to show off what it described as the center of Hamas’ tunnel network.
Military commanders boasted that they had uncovered offices, tunnels and elevators used by Hamas’ top leaders. The military released videos of underground offices and claimed to have found a wheelchair belonging to Hamas’ shadowy military commander, Mohammed Deif, who has not been seen in public in years.
The army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the army had located a vast underground complex. “They all used this infrastructure routinely, during emergencies and also at the beginning of the war on Oct. 7,” he said. He said the tunnels stretched across Gaza and into major hospitals. The claims could not be independently verified.
Hagari also indicated that Israel was winding down its operations in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where it has been battling Hamas militants for weeks. He said the army had moved into a final remaining Hamas stronghold, the Gaza City neighborhood of Tufah.
But the army also acknowledged a significant misstep. An investigation into its soldiers’ mistaken shooting of three Israelis held hostage in Gaza found that, five days before the shooting, a military search dog with a body camera had captured audio of them shouting for help in Hebrew.
Hagari said the recording was not reviewed until after the hostages were killed while trying to make themselves known to Israeli forces.
The incident has sparked an uproar in Israel and put pressure on the government to reach a new deal with Hamas. The military chief has said the shooting was against its rules of engagement.
The Israeli military campaign now is largely focused on southern Gaza, where it says Hamas’ leaders are hiding.
“We will continue the war until the end. It will continue until Hamas is destroyed, until victory,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement. “Whoever thinks we will stop is detached from reality.”
CEASEFIRE TALKS GAIN MOMENTUM
As Netanyahu vowed to continue the war, there were new signs of progress in ceasefire talks.
Hamas’ top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, traveled to Cairo for talks on the war, part of a flurry of diplomacy. In recent days, top Israeli, American and Qatari officials have also held ceasefire talks.
“These are very serious discussions and negotiations, and we hope that they lead somewhere,” the White House’s national security spokesman, John Kirby, said aboard Air Force One while traveling with President Joe Biden to Wisconsin.
Biden, however, indicated a deal was still a ways off. “There’s no expectation at this point, but we are pushing,” he said. Asked about the rising death toll in Gaza, Biden said: It’s tragic.”
Hamas says no more hostages will be released until the war ends. It is insisting on the release of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, including high-level militants convicted in deadly attacks, for remaining captives.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, said the efforts right now are focused on how to “stop this aggression, especially that our enemy now knows that it cannot achieve any of its goals.”
Israel has rejected Hamas’ demands for a mass prisoner release so far. But it has a history of lopsided exchanges for captive Israelis, and the government is under heavy public pressure to bring the hostages home safely.
Egypt, along with Qatar and the US, helped mediate a weeklong ceasefire in November in which Hamas freed over 100 hostages in exchange for Israel’s release of 240 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas and other militants are still holding an estimated 129 captives, though roughly 20 are believed to have died in captivity.
UN Security Council members are negotiating an Arab-sponsored resolution to halt the fighting in some way to allow for an increase in desperately needed humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.
A vote on the resolution, first scheduled for Monday, was pushed back again on Wednesday in the hopes of getting the US to support it or allow it to pass after it vetoed an earlier cease-fire call.
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
Mobile phone and Internet service was down across Gaza again on Wednesday. The outage could complicate efforts to communicate with Hamas leaders inside the territory who went into hiding after Oct. 7.
The war has led to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tens of thousands of people are crammed into shelters and tent camps amid shortages of food, medicine and other basic supplies. Israel’s foreign minister traveled to Cyprus to discuss the possibility of establishing a maritime corridor that would allow the delivery of large amounts of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
At least 46 people were killed and more than 100 wounded early Wednesday after Israel bombarded the urban Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, according to Munir Al-Bursh, a senior Health Ministry official.
At least five people were killed and dozens injured in another strike that hit three residential homes and a mosque in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah Wednesday, health officials said.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Tuesday the death toll since the start of the war had risen to more than 19,600. It does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
Israel’s military says 134 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. Israel says it has killed some 7,000 militants, without providing evidence. It blames civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying it uses them as human shields when it fights in residential areas.
Israel uncovers major Hamas command center in Gaza City as ceasefire talks gain momentum
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Israel uncovers major Hamas command center in Gaza City as ceasefire talks gain momentum
- The widespread destruction and heavy civilian death toll has drawn increasing international calls for a cease-fire
Lebanon media says Israel struck Hezbollah eastern stronghold overnight
- Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire following the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza
Beirut: Lebanese state-run media reported Thursday an overnight Israeli air raid on eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah holds sway, hours after the Iran-backed armed group launched an attack deep into Israeli territory.
Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire following the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, now in its eighth month.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said that “the outskirts of the eastern Lebanon mountain range, at midnight (2100 GMT Wednesday), was subjected to five enemy raids.”
The strikes in the Baalbek area “slightly injured a citizen” and caused fires, the report added.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that one of the strikes “hit a Hezbollah military camp.”
An Israeli army spokesman told AFP: “I can confirm that an airstrike was indeed conducted deep in Lebanon against a terror target related to Hezbollah’s precision missile project.”
The area of Baalbek in the Bekaa valley is a Hezbollah bastion, bordering Syria.
Hezbollah launchrocket barrage at Israeli positions
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it launched on Thursday “more than 60” rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for overnight air strikes.
Hezbollah fighters “launched a missile attack with more than 60 Katyusha rockets” on several Israeli military positions including in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the group said in a statement, adding it was “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks last night on the Bekaa region” in Lebanon’s east.
The cross-border fighting has killed at least 413 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including dozens of civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in areas on both sides of the border.
The top UN court is holding hearings on the Israeli military’s incursion into Rafah
- It is the fourth time South Africa has asked the ICJ for emergency measures
- South Africa has asked the court to order Israel to withdraw from Rafah
THE HAGUE: The United Nations’ top court opens two days of hearings on Thursday into a request from South Africa to make sure Israel halts its military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population has sought shelter.
It is the fourth time South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice for emergency measures since the nation launched proceedings alleging that Israel’s military action in its war with Hamas in Gaza amounts to genocide.
According to the latest request, the previous preliminary orders by The Hague-based court were not sufficient to address “a brutal military attack on the sole remaining refuge for the people of Gaza.”
Israel has portrayed Rafah as the last stronghold of the militant group, brushing off warnings from the United States and other allies that any major operation there would be catastrophic for civilians.
South Africa has asked the court to order Israel to withdraw from Rafah; to take measures to ensure unimpeded access for UN officials, humanitarian organizations and journalists to the Gaza Strip; and to report back within one week on how it is meeting these demands.
During hearings earlier this year, Israel strongly denied committing genocide in Gaza and said it does all it can to spare civilians and is only targeting Hamas militants. It says Hamas’ tactic of embedding in civilian areas makes it difficult to avoid civilian casualties.
In January, judges ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive that has laid waste to the Palestinian enclave.
In a second order in March, the court said Israel must take measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, including opening more land crossings to allow food, water, fuel and other supplies to enter.
Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced since fighting began.
The war began with a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which Palestinian militants killed around 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages. Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants in its count.
South Africa initiated proceedings in December 2023 and sees the legal campaign as rooted in issues central to its identity. Its governing party, the African National Congress, has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Blacks to “homelands.” Apartheid ended in 1994.
On Sunday, Egypt announced it plans to join the case. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Israeli military actions “constitute a flagrant violation of international law, humanitarian law, and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 regarding the protection of civilians during wartime.”
Several countries have also indicated they plan to intervene, but so far only Libya, Nicaragua and Colombia have filed formal requests to do so.
Israeli defense chief challenges Netanyahu over post-war Gaza plans
- Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vows to oppose any long-term military rule by Israel over Gaza
- Netanyahu accuses Gallant of making ‘excuses’ for not yet having destroyed Hamas in the conflict
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was publicly challenged about post-war plans for the Gaza Strip on Wednesday by his own defense chief, who vowed to oppose any long-term military rule by Israel over the ravaged Palestinian enclave.
The televised statement by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant marked the most vocal dissent from within Israel’s top echelon against Netanyahu during a seven-month-old and multi-front conflict that has set off political fissures at home and abroad.
Netanyahu hinted, in a riposte which did not explicitly name Gallant, that the retired admiral was making “excuses” for not yet having destroyed Hamas in a conflict now in its eight month.
But the veteran conservative premier soon appeared to be outflanked within his own war cabinet: Centrist ex-general Benny Gantz, the only voting member of the forum other than Netanyahu and Gallant, said the defense minister had “spoke(n) the truth.”
While reiterating the Netanyahu government’s goals of defeating Hamas and recovering remaining hostages from the Oct. 7 cross-border rampage by the faction, Gallant said these must be complemented by laying the groundwork for alternative Palestinian rule.
“We must dismantle Hamas’ governing capabilities in Gaza. The key to this goal is military action, and the establishment of a governing alternative in Gaza,” Gallant said.
“In the absence of such an alternative, only two negative options remain: Hamas’ rule in Gaza or Israeli military rule in Gaza,” he added, saying he would oppose the latter scenario and urging Netanyahu to formally forswear it.
Gallant said that, since October, he had tried to promote a plan to set up a “non-hostile Palestinian governing alternative” to Hamas — but got no response from the Israeli cabinet.
The format of his broadside, a pre-announced news conference carried live by Israeli TV and radio, recalled Gallant’s bombshell warning in March 2023 that foment over a judicial overhaul pursued by Netanyahu was threatening military cohesion.
At the time, Netanyahu announced that Gallant would be fired — but backed down amid a deluge of street demonstrations. Some defense analysts believe Gallant’s prediction was borne out by Hamas’ ability to blindside Israeli forces a few months later.
Asked on Wednesday whether he was worried he may again face being ousted, Gallant said: “I’m not blaming anyone. In a democratic country, I believe, it’s appropriate for a person, especially the defense minister who holds a position, to make it public.”
Gallant’s Gaza criticism recalled that of Israel’s chief ally, the United States, which has sought to parlay the war into a role for the internationally backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which wields limited governance in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu has refused this, describing the PA as a hostile entity — and repeated this position in a video statement he issued on social media within an hour of Gallant’s remarks.
Any move to create an alternative Gaza government requires that Hamas first be eliminated, Netanyahu said, finishing with the demand that this objective be pursued “without excuses.”
Netanyahu’s ruling coalition includes ultra-nationalist partners who want the PA dismantled and new Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Those partners have at times sparred with Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, over policy.
Netanyahu has said Israel would retain overall security control over Gaza after the war for the foreseeable future. He has stopped short of describing this scenario as an occupation — a status Washington does not want to see emerge — and has signalled opposition to Israelis settling the territory.
Over the last week, Israeli ground forces have returned to some areas of northern Gaza that they overran and quit in the first half of the war. Israel describes the new missions as planned crackdowns on efforts by Hamas holdouts to regroup, while Palestinians see evidence of the tenacity of the gunmen.
Briefing reporters on Tuesday, chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari was asked whether the absence of a post-Hamas strategy for Gaza was complicating operations.
“There is no doubt that an alternative to Hamas would generate pressure on Hamas, but that’s a question for the government echelon,” he responded.
Pro-Turkiye Syria mercenaries head to Niger to earn cash
- At least 1,000 fighters have been sent to Niger in recent months “to protect Turkish projects and interests,” says Syrian war monitor SOHR
- Niger borders oil-rich Libya, and in 2020, Washington accused Turkiye-linked SADAT of sending Syrian fighters to Libya
BEIRUT: Like hundreds of other pro-Turkish fighters, Omar left northern Syria for mineral-rich Niger last year, joining Syrian mercenaries sent to the West African nation by a private Turkish military company.
“The main reason I left is because life is hard in Syria,” fighter Omar, 24, told AFP on message app WhatsApp from Niger.
In northern Syria “there are no job opportunities besides joining an armed faction and earning no more than 1,500 Turkish lira ($46) a month,” Omar said, requesting like others AFP interviewed to be identified by a pseudonym for security reasons.
Analysts say Ankara has strong ties with the new military regime in Niamey, in power since a July 2023 coup.
And in recent months, at least 1,000 fighters have been sent to Niger “to protect Turkish projects and interests,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
For the past decade, Turkiye has been increasing its footprint in Niger, mostly through “humanitarian aid, development and commerce,” said Gabriella Korling, a researcher focusing on the Sahel at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.
“The defense component of the relation between Niger and Turkiye has become more important over time with the signing of a military cooperation agreement in 2020 and the sale of armed drones,” Korling said.
Niamey often refers to Turkiye, Russia and China as “partners that are respectful of Niger’s sovereignty,” she added.
Omar, who supports his mother and three siblings, said since leaving his home in August he receives a “very good” monthly salary of $1,500 for his work in the West African nation.
He hopes his earnings will help him start a small business and quit the battlefield, after years working as a fighter for a pro-Ankara faction.
Tens of thousands of young men have joined the ranks of jihadist factions and others loyal to Ankara in Syria’s north and northwest, where four million people, half of them displaced, live in desperate conditions.
Omar said he was among a first batch of more than 200 fighters who left Syria’s Turkish-controlled north in August for Niger.
He is now readying to return home after his six-month contract, renewed once, ended.
He and two other pro-Ankara Syrian fighters who spoke to AFP in recent weeks said they had enlisted for work in Niger with the Sultan Murad faction, one of Turkiye’s most loyal proxies in northern Syria.
They said they had signed six-month contracts at the faction’s headquarters with private firm SADAT International Defense Consultancy.
“SADAT officers came into the room and we signed the contract with them,” said fighter Ahmed.
“They handle everything,” from travel to accommodation, added the 30-year-old, who was readying to travel from northern Syria to Niger.
The company is widely seen as Ankara’s secret weapon in wars across North Africa and the Middle East, although its chief denied the allegation in a 2021 interview with AFP.
Niger borders oil-rich Libya, and in 2020, Washington accused SADAT of sending Syrian fighters to Libya.
Turkiye has sent thousands of Syrian fighters to Libya to buttress the Tripoli government, which it backs against rival Russian-backed authorities in the east according to the Observatory and the Syria Justice and Accountability Center.
The Center said SADAT was “responsible for the international air transport of mercenaries once they crossed into Turkish territory” to go to Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Turkiye has also sent Syrian fighters to bolster Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh, but its efforts to send mercenaries to Niger have been shrouded in secrecy.
Turkiye’s defense ministry told AFP: “All these allegations are false and have no truth.”
Omar said his journey took him to Gaziantep in Turkiye, then to Istanbul, where he boarded a military plane to Burkina Faso before being driven under escort to camps in neighboring Niger.
After two weeks of military training, he was tasked with guarding a site near a mine, whose name he said he didn’t know.
He said he and other Syrians worked alongside Nigeriens in military fatigues, but was unable to say if they were soldiers.
“They divided us into several groups of guards and fighters,” he said.
Another group “was sent to fight Boko Haram (jihadists) and another was sent to Lome” in neighboring Togo, he said, without providing details about their mission.
His family collects his monthly salary, minus a $350 fee for his faction.
Ahmed, who has been a fighter for 10 years, said he had been told his mission would consist of “protecting military positions” after undergoing training.
He said “there could be battles” at some point, but did not know who he would be fighting.
The father of three said he spent six months in Libya in 2020 earning more than $2,000 a month.
In July 2023, the army seized power in Niger, ending security and defense agreements with Western countries including France, which has withdrawn forces who were fighting jihadists.
“The coup in 2023 did not disrupt diplomatic relations between Turkiye and Niger,” researcher Korling added, pointing to the appointment of the first Turkish defense attache to Niger earlier this year.
Last year, Turkish state television opened a French-language channel covering Africa, and Ankara operates daily flights to Niamey.
“Turkiye, given its religious proximity and lack of political and historical baggage, is looked upon quite favorably in Niger especially in comparison to” Western countries, said Korling.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Turkiye was “exploiting” impoverished men in areas under its control “to recruit them as mercenaries in military operations” serving Ankara’s foreign interests.
The war monitor and other human rights groups said promises of lucrative payments to mercenaries sent abroad are not always kept.
Mohammad Al-Abdallah of the Syria Justice and Accountability Center said his organization had for example documented “false promises of granting Turkish citizenship” to those sent to Azerbaijan or Libya.
Abdul Rahman noted reports that about 50 Syrian fighters had been killed in Niger, mostly after they were attacked by jihadists, but he said his organization had only verified nine deaths, with four bodies having been repatriated.
A source within a faction whose members have been dispatched to Niger said about 50 bodies were expected to return in the coming days.
For Abed, a 30-year-old Syrian who has been displaced with his family for more than a decade, death is a risk he has decided to take.
The father of four and sole breadwinner told AFP: “I’m scared of dying... but maybe I could die here” too.
The difference, he said, is that in Syria “I would die for 1,000 Turkish liras ($30), and (in Niger) I would die for $1,500.”
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Tunisian bar association accuses policemen of torturing a lawyer during detention
- Lawyer Souad Boker said Zagrouba appeared on Wednesday before the investigating judge in a exhausted state
- Lawyer Mahdi Zagrouba was arrested after he criticized the president for detaining Sonia Dahmani, another lawyer, during the weekend
TUNIS: Tunisian lawyer Mahdi Zagrouba was tortured by police officers after being arrested on Monday, lawyers and a human rights organization said on Wednesday after he collapsed in court and was taken to a hospital.
The Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Lawyer Souad Boker said Zagrouba appeared on Wednesday before the investigating judge in a exhausted state, adding that “he mentioned the names of the policemen who tortured him before he suffered a collapse and coma.”
Witnesses and lawyers said that Zagrouba was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
TAP state news agency quoted Zarouba’s attorney, Boubaker Ben Thabet, as saying Zagrouba had been subjected to “systematic torture” during his detention.
Toumi Ben Farhat, another lawyer representing Zagrouba, said his colleague “was subjected to extremely severe torture.”
Tunisian police stormed the bar association’s headquarters on Monday for the second time in two days and arrested Zagrouba, who has criticized the president, after detaining Sonia Dahmani, another lawyer, during the weekend.
Bassam Trifi, the head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, said that “Zagrouba was subjected to brutal torture, and I personally witnessed the torture on his body.”
Without referring to the allegations, President Kais Saied said in a statement after a meeting with Minister of Justice Laila Jafel that the state is responsible for guaranteeing every prisoner the right to treatment that preserves his dignity.
The Bar Association said in a statement late on Wednesday that torture deserves criminal prosecution, and that it held the Ministry of Interior officers responsible. It said a strike was planned for Thursday.
Saied took office after free elections in 2019, but two years later he shut down the elected parliament and has ruled by decree.
The European Union said on Tuesday it was concerned about the wave of imprisonment of many civil society figures, journalists and political activists, and demanded clarifications from Tunisia.
