International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant against Netanyahu, ex-defence minister Gallant, Hamas’s Al-Masri

The International Criminal Court on Thursday issued arrest warrants against Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former defence minister Yoav Gallant

And Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, Reuters reported. The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan on May 20 announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes linked to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Tel Aviv’s military action in Gaza.

“The Chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity,” the three-judge panel wrote in its unanimous decision to issue warrants, AP reported.

Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the ICC and has denied war crimes in Gaza. It has claimed to have killed Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, in airstrike but Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied the claims. Israel is not a member state of the court. The country has struggled to investigate itself in the past, rights groups say.

Israel-Hamas conflict
At least 44,056 people have been killed in the conflict in Gaza since October 7 last year, Hamas regime’s health ministry said. The toll includes 71 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,268 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip.

The war began when Hamas stormed into southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Dozens of people were killed or unaccounted for after Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, a hospital director and the civil defence agency told AFP on Thursday.