International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan has again requested urgent arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahuand defence minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. He also sought a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed in an air strike in July.
Mr Khan cited concerns about potential interference with ongoing investigations amid escalating violence and alleged ongoing war crimes in Gaza. He noted the ongoing crimes of hostage-taking and starvation, and emphasised the continued offences as reasons for immediate action by the court’s pre-trial chamber.
In his filing to the court, Mr Khan expressed frustration with the court’s delay in issuing the warrants, urging swift action ahead of Mr Netanyahu’s scheduled speech at the United Nations General Assembly later this month, adding that “any unjustified delay in proceedings harms the rights of the victims”.
Israel described the proceedings at The Hague as politically biased. “The comparison drawn by the Hague prosecutor between Israel’s prime minister and defence minister – who are combating Hamas’s murderous terrorism in accordance with the laws of war – and the war criminal Sinwar, who coldly executes Israeli hostages, is both anti-Semitic and a moral outrage of the highest order,” said a statement from Mr Netanyahu’s office.
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Mr Khan’s request came a few hours after at least 19 Palestinians were killed in overnight Israeli strikes in the al-Mawasi designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, according to the Hamas–run health ministry. Residents reported massive destruction, saying the strikes created three craters 7m deep and buried more than 20 tents sheltering war refugees.
The Israeli military said three senior Hamas commanders were killed in the attack, including the head of Hamas’s aerial forces and the head of surveillance and targets in Hamas’s intelligence division.
It accused Hamas of placing fighters inside the designated humanitarian zone where hundreds of thousands of displaced residents have fled and said “many steps” were taken to mitigate harm to civilians in the strikes, including “lengthy intelligence gathering” and continuous aerial surveillance in the hours before the attack.
According to the Gaza health ministry, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on October 7th. Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 253 hostages seized in the surprise Hamas attack that day. More than 60 living hostages, and the bodies of about 35 others taken captive but believed to be dead, are still in Gaza, according to the Israeli authorities.
Mr Gallant told troops on the Lebanese border on Tuesday that Israel was moving its focus to the northern front as it aims to achieve its objectives in the Gaza Strip soon.
“The centre of gravity is moving to the north; we are nearing the completion of our missions in the south, but we have a task here that has not been carried out, and this mission is to change the security situation and return the residents to their homes,” he said.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Tuesday said Washington intends to present new Gaza ceasefire proposals “very soon”. He also criticised Israel’s killing last week of an American-Turkish citizen during a West Bank protest, describing it as “unprovoked and unjustified”.
The Israeli army’s preliminary investigation into Friday’s incident near the West Bank village of Beita determined that Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was hit “with high probability by indirect and unintended [Israel Defense Forces] fire that was aimed at a central instigator”. The family of the American activist rejected the Israeli army’s preliminary inquiry into her death as “wholly inadequate”.
