Gaza, Lebanon conflicts see civilian casualties at highest point in over a decade

People stand next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir Al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, January 14, 2025. (Reuters)
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Updated 14 January 2025
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Gaza, Lebanon conflicts see civilian casualties at highest point in over a decade

  • Israeli military action responsible for more than half of all non-combatants killed or injured in bombings and explosions in 2024
  • Last year saw casualty figures increase globally by more than two-thirds, with airstrikes the leading cause of death and injury

LONDON: The number of civilian casualties worldwide caused by bombings or explosions during conflicts has reached its highest point in over a decade, driven in particular by Israel’s campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.

The monitoring group Action on Armed Violence said it had identified 61,353 non-combatants killed or wounded in 2024, up 67 percent on 2023. Of those figures, 25,116 were fatalities, a 51 percent increase.

AOAV said Israeli military activity in Gaza and Lebanon was responsible for 55 percent of all civilians killed or wounded by explosions, at 33,910 people.

Gaza alone accounted for 39 percent of all casualties recorded, with 14,435 killed in explosions and 9,314 injured.

The civil war in Sudan has also contributed to the uptick in numbers, as well as 11,693 civilians killed or wounded by explosions in the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Spikes in casualties between 2013 and 2017 were due to the conflict in Syria, but the 2024 total was more than double that previous high-water mark. 

The top cause of death and injury from explosions in 2024 was airstrikes — a tactic Israel has used extensively in Gaza and Lebanon.

The number of casualties caused this way more than doubled from 2023, with 30,804 people affected.

AOAV Executive Director Iain Overton said: “2024 has been a catastrophic year for civilians caught in explosive violence, particularly in Gaza, Ukraine and Lebanon. The international community cannot ignore the scale of harm caused.”

The true number of people affected by bombings and explosions is likely to be far higher, as AOAV bases its figures on English-language accounts of incidents.

For instance, where AOAV was only able to verify 14,435 people killed by explosions in Gaza, local health authorities put the number at 23,600.

A report last week in medical journal The Lancet estimated that casualties in Gaza in 2024 could be as much as 40 percent higher than those reported by the enclave’s authorities. 


Two Supreme Court judges shot dead in Tehran, Iranian judiciary says

Updated 5 sec ago
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Two Supreme Court judges shot dead in Tehran, Iranian judiciary says

Two senior Iranian Supreme Court judges involved in handling espionage and terrorism cases were shot dead in the capital Tehran on Saturday, Iran’s judiciary said.
It said the attacker killed himself after opening fire at the judges inside the Supreme Court, and that a bodyguard of one of the judges was wounded.
The judiciary identified the judges who were killed as mid-ranking Shiite Muslim clerics Mohammad Moghiseh and Ali Razini.
While the motive for the assassination was still unclear, judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir told state television that the two judges had long been involved in “national security cases, including espionage and terrorism.”
“In the past year, the judiciary has undertaken extensive efforts to identify spies and terrorist groups, a move that has sparked anger and resentment among the enemies,” he said.
State TV said these cases were related to individuals linked to Israel and the Iranian opposition supported by the United States. It did not elaborate.
Opposition websites have in the past said Moghiseh was involved in trials of people they described as political prisoners.
Razini was a target of an assassination attempt in 1998.

Trump comeback restarts Israeli public debate on West Bank annexation

Updated 19 min 1 sec ago
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Trump comeback restarts Israeli public debate on West Bank annexation

  • With Trump returning to the White House, pro-annexation Israelis are hoping to rekindle the idea
  • Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler in the Palestinian territory, said recently that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria“

JERUSALEM: When Donald Trump presented his 2020 plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it included the Israeli annexation of swathes of the occupied West Bank, a controversial aspiration that has been revived by his reelection.
In his previous stint as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for partial annexation of the West Bank, but he relented in 2020 under international pressure and following a deal to normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates.
With Trump returning to the White House, pro-annexation Israelis are hoping to rekindle the idea.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler in the Palestinian territory, said recently that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” referring to the biblical name that Israel uses for the West Bank.
The territory was part of the British colony of Mandatory Palestine, from which Israel was carved during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, with Jordanian forces taking control of the West Bank during the same conflict.
Israel conquered the territory from Amman in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and has occupied it ever since.
Today, many Jews in Israel consider the West Bank part of their historical homeland and reject the idea of a Palestinian state in the territory, with hundreds of thousands having settled in the territory.
Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and its 200,000 Jewish residents, the West Bank is home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.
Around three million Palestinians live in the West Bank.
Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization for the municipal councils of West Bank settlements, insisted the status quo could not continue.
“The State of Israel must make a decision,” he said.
Without sovereignty, he added, “no one is responsible for infrastructure, roads, water and electricity.”
“We will do everything in our power to apply Israeli sovereignty, at least over Area C,” he said, referring to territory under sole Israeli administration that covers 60 percent of the West Bank, including the vast majority of Israeli settlements.
Even before taking office, Trump and his incoming administration have made a number of moves that have raised the hopes of pro-annexation Israelis.
The president-elect nominated the pro-settlement Baptist minister Mike Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel. His nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said this would be “the most pro-Israel administration in American history” and that it would lift US sanctions on settlers.
Eugene Kontorovich of the conservative think thank Misgav Institute pointed out that the Middle East was a very different place to what it was during Trump’s first term.
The war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel’s hammering of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of Syrian president Bashar Assad, all allies of Israel’s arch-foe Iran, have transformed the region.
“October 7 showed the entire world the danger of leaving these (Palestinian) territories’ status in limbo,” Kontorovich said, referring to Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel 15 months ago that sparked the Gaza war.
He said “the war has really turned a large part of the Israeli population away from a two-state solution.”
The two-state solution, which would create an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, has been the basis of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations going back decades.
Even before Trump won November’s US presidential election, NGOs were denouncing what they called a de facto annexation, pointing to a spike in land grabs and an overhaul of the bureaucratic and administrative structures Israel uses to manage the West Bank.
An outright, de jure annexation would be another matter, however.
Israel cannot expropriate private West Bank land at the moment, but “once annexed, Israeli law would allow it. That’s a major change,” said Aviv Tatarsky, from the Israeli anti-settlement organization Ir Amim.
He said that in the event that Israel annexes Area C, Palestinians there would likely not be granted residence permits and the accompanying rights.
The permits, which Palestinians in east Jerusalem received, allow people freedom of movement within Israel and the right to use Israeli courts. West Bank Palestinians can resort to the supreme court, but not lower ones.
Tatarsky said that for Palestinians across the West Bank, annexation would constitute “a nightmare scenario.”
Over 90 percent of them live in areas A and B, under full or partial control of the Palestinian Authority.
But, Tatarsky pointed out, “their daily needs and routine are indissociable from Area C,” the only contiguous portion of the West Bank, where most agricultural lands are and which breaks up areas A and B into hundreds of territorial islets.


Over 55,000 displaced Sudanese return to southeastern state: IOM

Updated 39 min 38 sec ago
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Over 55,000 displaced Sudanese return to southeastern state: IOM

  • IOM said its field teams “monitored the return of an estimated 55,466 displaced persons
  • Famine has been declared in parts of the country

PORT SUDAN: Over 55,000 internally displaced Sudanese have returned to areas across the southeastern state of Sennar, more than a month after the army recaptured the state capital from paramilitaries, the UN migration agency said Saturday.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said its field teams “monitored the return of an estimated 55,466 displaced persons to locations across Sennar state” between December 18 and January 10.
Across the entire country, however, the United Nations says 21 months of war have created the world’s worst internal displacement crisis, uprooting more than 12 million people.
Famine has been declared in parts of the country, but the risk is spreading for millions more people, including to areas north of Sennar, a UN-backed assessment said last month.
In November, the Sudanese army, battling the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, said it had regained control of Sinja, the Sennar state capital and a key link between army-controlled areas of central and eastern Sudan.
The RSF had controlled Sinja since late June when its attack on Sennar state forced nearly 726,000 people — many displaced from other states — to flee, according to the United Nations.
The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands.
On Thursday, the United States Treasury Department sanctioned army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals, as well as using food deprivation as a weapon of war.
The move came just over a week after Washington also sanctioned RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, accusing his group of committing genocide.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Dagalo had been designated for “gross violations of human rights” in Sudan’s western Darfur region, “namely the mass rape of civilians by RSF soldiers under his control.”


Yemen’s Houthis say will deal with Israel in case of any violations Gaza ceasefire deal

Updated 57 min 1 sec ago
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Yemen’s Houthis say will deal with Israel in case of any violations Gaza ceasefire deal

  • Houthis to coordinate closely with the Palestinian resistance to deal with any Israel violation

CAIRO: Yemen’s Houthis said they will coordinate closely with the Palestinian resistance to deal with Israel in case of any violations to the Gaza ceasefire deal, the militant group’s military spokesperson said on Saturday.


At least 46,899 Palestinians killed in Israel’s Gaza war since Oct. 7, 2023, health ministry says

Updated 18 January 2025
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At least 46,899 Palestinians killed in Israel’s Gaza war since Oct. 7, 2023, health ministry says

  • 23 Palestinians were killed and 83 were injured over the past 24 hours

CAIRO: Israel’s military offensive on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 46,899 Palestinians and injured 110,725 since Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said in an update on Saturday.
23 Palestinians were killed and 83 were injured over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said.