Israel Completes ‘Iron Wall’ Barrier on Gaza Border

 Israeli soldiers walk by the fence along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers walk by the fence along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. (AFP)
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Israel Completes ‘Iron Wall’ Barrier on Gaza Border

 Israeli soldiers walk by the fence along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers walk by the fence along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. (AFP)

Israel on Tuesday announced the completion of a barrier along the Gaza border, described as an "iron wall" equipped with underground sensors, radars and cameras to curb threats.

Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza since 2007, the year Hamas took power in the Palestinian enclave, tightly restricting the flow of goods and people in and out of the territory home to some two million people.

An Israeli defense ministry statement said the 65-kilometre (40-mile) "barrier", completed after three and half years of construction, includes an "underground barrier with sensors", a six meter-high smart fence, radars, cameras and a maritime monitoring system.

The structure "places an iron wall... between the (Hamas) terror organization and the residents" of southern Israel, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said.

During the most recent Hamas-Israel conflict in May, Palestinian fighters fired thousands of rockets towards Israel, which responded with hundreds of air strikes.

Over 240 people were killed in Gaza, while the death toll in Israel reached 12 in the 11 days of fighting.

But Israel has also warned its citizens face additional threats from Hamas forces who could seek to infiltrate Israeli territory through tunnels dug under Gaza.

Gantz vowed that the "barrier will provide Israeli citizens a sense of security".

Israel says its Gaza blockade is necessary to guard against threats from Hamas, but critics blame it for dire humanitarian conditions in the territory.

Israel has also built a security barrier along part of its land that connects to the West Bank, a Palestinian territory it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.



Evidence of Ongoing 'Crimes Against Humanity' in Darfur, Says ICC Deputy Prosecutor

A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
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Evidence of Ongoing 'Crimes Against Humanity' in Darfur, Says ICC Deputy Prosecutor

A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo

There are "reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity" are being committed in war-ravaged Sudan's western Darfur region, the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said.

Outlining her office's probe of the devastating conflict which has raged since 2023, Nazhat Shameem Khan told the UN Security Council that it was "difficult to find appropriate words to describe the depth of suffering in Darfur," AFP reported.

"On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity, have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur," she said.

The prosecutor's office focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, Khan said, interviewing victims who fled to neighboring Chad.

She detailed an "intolerable" humanitarian situation, with apparent targeting of hospitals and humanitarian convoys, while warning that "famine is escalating" as aid is unable to reach "those in dire need."

"People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponized," Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become "common practice."

"And yet we should not be under any illusion, things can still get worse."

The Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005, with some 300,000 people killed during conflict in the region in the 2000s.

In 2023, the ICC opened a fresh probe into war crimes in Darfur after a new conflict erupted between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF's predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide two decades ago in the vast western region.

ICC judges are expected to deliver their first decision on crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago in the case of Ali Mohamed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kosheib, after the trial ended in 2024.

"I wish to be clear to those on the ground in Darfur now, to those who are inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population -- they may feel a sense of impunity at this moment, as Ali Kosheib may have felt in the past," said Khan.

"But we are working intensively to ensure that the Ali Kosheib trial represents only the first of many in relation to this situation at the International Criminal Court," she added.