Amnesty International on Thursday accused Hamas and its allies for the first time of crimes against humanity during and after their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, with the Palestinian militant group rejecting the report as “lies”.The findings also drew criticism from Israel, which accused Amnesty of bias and of failing to give a full accounting of the crimes committed during the attack, which sparked the Gaza war.”Palestinian armed groups committed violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and crimes against humanity during their attacks in southern Israel that started on 7 October 2023,” the human rights watchdog said in its 173-page report.Amnesty said the mass killing of civilians that day amounted “to the crime against humanity of extermination”.Hamas condemned the report, saying it contained “inaccuracies and contradictions”.”The report’s repetition of the lies and allegations promoted by the occupation (Israeli) government concerning rape, sexual violence, and the mistreatment of captives clearly demonstrates that the purpose of this report is incitement and distorting the image of the resistance,” the group said in a statement.It called on Amnesty to retract the “flawed and unprofessional” document.Israel, meanwhile, said the report failed to show the full extent of the attack.”It took Amnesty International more than two years to address Hamas’s heinous crimes, and even now its report falls far short of reflecting the full scope of Hamas’s horrific atrocities,” foreign ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein wrote on X, accusing the rights group of being a “biased organisation”.Amnesty has previously accused Israel of committing genocide in its retaliatory campaign in Gaza, an accusation Israel has vehemently denied.The rights group said Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza “continued to commit violations and crimes under international law in their holding and mistreatment of hostages and the withholding of bodies seized”.”The holding of hostages was done as part of an explicitly stated plan explained by the leadership of Hamas and of other Palestinian armed groups,” the report stated.- Mass killing -Amnesty previously accused Hamas and other groups of committing war crimes, which are serious violations of international law against civilians and combatants during armed conflict.Crimes against humanity can occur in peacetime and include torture, rape and discrimination, be it racial, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender-based. They involve “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population”.The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people. Militants also took 251 people hostage that day, including 44 who were dead.Of the 207 hostages taken alive, 41 died or were killed in captivity. All have since been returned — mostly under a series of ceasefire agreements — except for the body of one Israeli officer.Among the acts listed by Amnesty as crimes against humanity were murder, extermination, imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, rape and “other forms of sexual violence”.For the latter crimes, Amnesty said it was unable to interview survivors except for one case, and therefore could not conclude the scope or scale of the sexual violence.The report concluded Hamas and its armed wing were “chiefly responsible” for the crimes.Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and “unaffiliated Palestinian civilians”, were responsible to a lesser extent.- Arrest warrants -In May 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) applied for arrest warrants for Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, head of its armed wing Mohammed Deif, and its October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, who was the group’s then chief in Gaza.The ICC withdrew the applications after all three were killed later that year by Israel.The court also issued a still-active arrest warrant for Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the war.In December 2024, Amnesty accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. It warned late last month Israel was “still committing genocide”, despite the current ceasefire.When Amnesty first made the accusation, Israel strongly rejected it as “entirely false” and called the report “fabricated” and “based on lies”.Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 70,373 people, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.”We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.”With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.”The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured. “But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.””We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.” 

Wearing only sandals and cotton sweaters to protect themselves from the winter rain, Palestinians dug trenches in the muddy ground around their tents in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood in an effort to keep out encroaching storm waters. Starting late Wednesday, heavy rains from Storm Byron have swept across the Palestinian territory, flooding tents and makeshift shelters, bringing yet more hardship to Gaza’s residents, nearly all of whom have faced displacement in more than two years of war.In Zeitoun, a child carrying two empty 20-litre jerrycans walked barefoot in the mud to retrieve drinkable water from a temporary water station.With most of Gaza’s buildings destroyed or damaged, thousands of tents and homemade shelters now line areas cleared of rubble.Although a truce between Israel and militant group Hamas that took effect in October has partially eased restrictions on goods and aid, supplies have entered in insufficient quantities, according to the United Nations, and the humanitarian needs are still immense.- ‘Don’t know where to go’ -According to a UN report, 761 displacement sites hosting about 850,000 people are at high risk of flooding.In the low-lying areas between tents in central Gaza’s Al-Zawayda camp, water pooled and formed small ankle-deep ponds, forcing displaced residents to wade through or hop across on exposed patches of soil.”Last night was a terrible night for us and our children because of the heavy rain and cold. The children got all wet, the blankets got wet, the mattresses got wet, and we did not know where to go,” said Suad Muslim, who lives in a tent with her family in Zawayda.”Give us a decent tent, blankets for our children, clothes to wear. I swear their feet are bare and they have no shoes. How long will we remain in this situation? This is injustice,” she told AFP, raising her voice over the sound of large raindrops hitting the plastic tarp roof of her tent.Located between the Sinai and the Negev Desert on one side, and the Mediterranean Sea on the other, the tiny Gaza Strip receives almost all of its precipitation in the form of strong rain in the late autumn and winter.- Drenched with no heat -In the fully closed-off territory, aid shortages mean the already destitute population is not equipped to properly cope with the winter weather.”The situation is dire,” said Shuruq Muslim, a displaced woman from the city of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. “We can’t even go outside to light a fire (to cook) because we have no gas or firewood.”Gas, firewood, food and medicine have all been in short supply since the start of the war, with most people surviving on aid coming from outside.In Zawayda, the most fortunate had paved the floor of their tents with reused bricks to keep the sodden sand from dampening their few belongings.In areas where tarmac had not been stripped from the road, bulldozers were still at work clearing rubble from buildings destroyed during the war.Many residents in the camp stood under their tent awnings rather than sitting on wet surfaces and waited for the rain to stop.- Reconstruction still far away -Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency, told AFP the weather had brought more suffering for the territory’s already reeling residents, causing one death when a wall collapsed during the storm.”The storm has had a severe impact on the population. Buildings have collapsed and much of the infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving the area unable to drain the large volume of rainfall,” he said.His agency said in a statement Thursday that its teams responded to three houses that partially collapsed during the strong rainfall.It warned residents against returning to homes made structurally unsound during the war — and made even more unsafe by the rains washing away topsoil and rubble.Bassal said more aid needed to enter Gaza, but of the sort that would lead to long-term shelters for people, not temporary fixes.”Tents are categorically rejected. What must be provided now are mobile homes equipped with solar power, comprising two rooms, a bathroom, and all the necessary facilities for residents. Only then can reconstruction begin,” he added.