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    ICC Had Sought Warrants for 3 Hamas Leaders. At Least 2 Are Now Dead.

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    The International Criminal Court on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for a single Hamas official — not three as the chief prosecutor had initially sought in May. That’s because two of them have since been killed.Karim Khan, the court’s chief prosecutor, requested the warrants after investigating Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza.In May, Mr. Khan asked the court to issue warrants for Hamas’s top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar; its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh; and its military chief, Muhammad Deif. He accused them of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the killing of civilians and the capture of hostages during the October 2023 attack, as well as maltreatment of and sexual violence against hostages during their captivity in Gaza.The requests required approval by judges from the I.C.C., the world’s top criminal court. That took months. In the meantime, Mr. Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in July, a killing widely attributed to Israel. The court subsequently announced that it had terminated proceedings against him. And Israeli forces killed Mr. Sinwar in a firefight in Gaza in October.As for Mr. Deif, Israel claimed to have killed him in an airstrike in Gaza in October. On Thursday, the court said it was “not in a position to determine whether Mr. Deif has been killed or remains alive” and was therefore issuing the warrant for his arrest.Matthew Mpoke Bigg More

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      Behind the Tactical Gains Against Iran, a Longer-Term Worry

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      Experts inside and outside the Biden administration fear that Iran may conclude it has only one defense left: racing for an atomic weapon.When Israeli fighter jets roared off the runways on Friday night, on a thousand-mile run to Iran, they headed for two major sets of targets: the air defenses that protect Tehran, including Iran’s leadership, and the giant fuel mixers that make propellant for Iran’s missile fleet.Israel’s military leaders, in calls with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other senior American officials, had concluded that taking out the air defenses would make Iran’s leaders fearful that Tehran itself could not be defended. That feeling of vulnerability was already high, after Israel decimated the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, Tehran’s proxy forces that could strike Israel, over the past month.The surprise element for the Iranians was a set of strikes that hit a dozen or so fuel mixers, and took out the air defenses that protected several critical oil and petrochemical refineries, according to a senior U.S. official and two Israeli defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.Without the capability to mix fuel, Iran cannot produce more of the type of ballistic missiles that its forces fired on Israel on Oct. 1, the immediate provocation for Israel’s strike. And it could take more than a year to replace them from Chinese and other suppliers.By Saturday, American and Israeli officials were claiming a major success, but lurking behind the satisfaction with the tactical gains lies a longer-term worry. With Iran’s Russian-produced air defenses in smoldering piles, many fear the Iranian leaders may conclude they have only one defense left: racing for an atomic weapon.That is just what American strategists have been desperately trying to avoid for a quarter-century, using sabotage, cyberattacks and diplomacy to keep Tehran from crossing the threshold to become a full nuclear-armed power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Jets Pummel Hezbollah Targets in Southern Lebanon

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      Sirens sounded in northern Israel, warning of incoming fire from Hezbollah.Israel’s air force pounded targets in Lebanon as its soldiers clashed with Hezbollah militants in the southern part of the country, the military said on Sunday. Lebanon’s government said that at least 23 people had been killed over the past 24 hours.The Lebanese Red Cross said overnight that it was responding to a “major strike” in the southern city of Nabatieh, posting an image on social media that showed flames and rubble. Lebanon’s civil defense said on Sunday morning one person had been killed and four others wounded.The civil defense also said its teams had completed a search and rescue operation shortly before dawn after an attack a day earlier on the town of Al-Maaysra in the central Keserwan district. It said that 17 people — including two women and three children — had been killed and 12 others wounded. The Health Ministry listed a series of other attacks in which it said that at least six people had been killed and dozens of others injured since Saturday.On Sunday morning, the Israeli military said that its jets had hit around “200 Hezbollah targets deep in Lebanon and southern Lebanon” over the past day as part of its multipronged fight against the Iranian-backed militant group.Hezbollah started firing on northern Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks last year, setting off back-and-forth exchanges of fire that displaced communities on both sides of the border. Israel, which is also fighting in Gaza against Hamas, stepped up its bombardment in recent weeks before invading southern Lebanon with ground troops.The Israeli bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 2,000 people and caused significant destruction and forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians to flee their homes. Aid agencies have warned it is compounding a humanitarian crisis prompted by the war in Gaza.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Attacks in Lebanon Mark a Sharp Strategic Shift

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      The events of this week seem to indicate that Israel’s leaders have decided they can no longer live with the threat of Hezbollah on their northern border, analysts say.The death toll from a devastating Israeli airstrike on central Beirut rose to at least 37 on Saturday, with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah confirming that two of its senior commanders were among those killed. Dozens more were wounded in the strikes, which leveled two apartment buildings and plunged Lebanon into further chaos days after pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members exploded en masse.The attacks have left Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most sophisticated political and military force, in deep disarray and appeared to hail a stark shift in the calculations that had long governed the decades-old conflict between Israel and the militant group.After a hugely destructive war in 2006, Hezbollah’s leaders spent years building military capacity they thought could counter and perhaps deter Israeli attacks. And until last week, Israel had refrained from launching the kind of attacks that its leaders had previously feared could provoke retaliatory strikes on critical infrastructure or incursions by Hezbollah commandos. However, events of the past few days have suggested that Hezbollah grossly underestimated its adversary, as Israel dashed across what had been unofficially considered red lines.The region was on edge Saturday in anticipation of a Hezbollah counterattack, with President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, telling reporters that the fighting posed an “acute” risk of escalation. Hezbollah issued calls for vengeance on Saturday and fired rocket salvos into northern Israel, but those reactions are routine. Meanwhile, Israeli fighter jets continued to pummel Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, including, its military said, hundreds of Hezbollah rocket launchers.“Eighteen years of mutual deterrence has now given way to a new phase of one-sided superiority on the part of Israel,” said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based research organization. “The facade that Hezbollah had been presenting to the world of it being an impenetrable organization is shattered, and Israel has displayed with flair how much of an upper hand it has in this equation vis-à-vis Hezbollah.”People in Beirut mourning Hezbollah fighters on Thursday.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Senior Hezbollah Leader Is Killed in Beirut in Israeli Airstrike

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      The attack, which Lebanese officials said killed at least 14 and injured more than 60, stoked fears Israel is driving toward a full-blown war on its northern border, even as the fight in Gaza goes on.Israeli fighter jets bombed an apartment building in Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs on Friday in what the military called an attack on Hezbollah militants, including a senior commander who was wanted in the deadly 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the senior commander, Ibrahim Aqeel, had been killed, along with “around” 10 others from Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, who were meeting underneath the residential building.In a statement, Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia backed by Iran, confirmed that Mr. Aqeel had been killed. The strike marked an escalation in Israel’s bloody conflict with the militia and fueled fears among Lebanese, Israelis and diplomats that Israel is driving closer to a full-blown war with Hezbollah, even as it continues to fight Hamas in Gaza.The strike on Friday came as Lebanon was still reeling from the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday — widely attributed to Israel — that blew up communication devices belonging to Hezbollah members, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands, Lebanese health officials said. Hezbollah’s leader vowed on Thursday to retaliate against Israel for those blasts, but did not describe how or when.As with Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, the one on Friday in Lebanon led to destruction and death in a heavily residential area. Lebanese officials said that two apartment buildings had collapsed, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 60 others, including children. Residents described ambulances racing through the streets, a column of smoke rising above the skyline and rescuers frantically digging through rubble.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Discovery of 6 Dead Hostages in Gaza Spurs Protest and Division in Israel

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      The Israeli military said Sunday that Hamas had killed the hostages before they were discovered by Israeli troops on Saturday.The Israeli military said on Sunday that six bodies found in a tunnel under the Gaza Strip belonged to hostages who had been killed by Hamas, setting off a wave of grief and anger in Israel and further cleaving the deep divisions among the public, and the country’s leaders, over the future course of the war.Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesman, said the bodies had been recovered a day earlier in the labyrinths under the southern city of Rafah, about one kilometer from where a seventh hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, was found alive last week.“They were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” Admiral Hagari said. The Israeli Ministry of Health said in a statement on Sunday that the hostages were killed by “a number of short-range shots” and that they had died about “48-72 hours before their examination.”After the recovery of six hostages that the Israeli military said had been killed by Hamas, demonstrators filled the streets of Tel Aviv demanding that the government do more to bring the remaining hostages home.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesIn an initial statement, Hamas did not directly address the accusations but said responsibility for the deaths lay with Israel, which it blamed for the lack of an agreement to stop the fighting in Gaza. Hamas later asserted in a separate statement that the hostages were killed by the Israeli military’s bullets, without providing evidence.The recovery of the hostages’ bodies put into stark relief the competing priorities of Israel’s leaders: those intent on dismantling Hamas through the pursuit and killing of its fighters and officials, and those who want to reach a truce that would bring home the dozens of captives still believed to be still alive in the enclave.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In a Region on Edge, Israel and Hezbollah Launch Major Attacks on Each Other

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      The escalating strikes across the Israel-Lebanon border fueled fears of a bigger conflagration, but both sides signaled that they were de-escalating, for now.Amid fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, the two sides on Sunday mounted the biggest round of cross-border strikes since the war in Gaza began, with Israel bombing dozens of sites in a pre-emptive attack, and Hezbollah launching hundreds of rockets and drones.Within hours, both sides appeared to de-escalate, at least temporarily, but signaled that the violence and dangerous tensions could continue. Hezbollah said its operation, vengeance for the Israeli assassination of a senior commander, had “finished for the day,” but left open the possibility of further action. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that “what happened today is not the final word.”For weeks, Israelis have waited in trepidation for a major attack promised by Hezbollah in retaliation for the airstrike last month in a suburb of Beirut that killed one of its leaders, Fuad Shukr. Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, has also vowed retribution for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader, on a visit to Tehran, hours after Mr. Shukr was killed, though it appears to have put that plan on hold.After the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah began firing frequently on Israel, prompting widespread Israeli bombardment. Repeated strikes, counter-strikes and threats have forced more than 160,000 people to evacuate on both sides of the border, stoking fears that the conflict would ignite full-scale regional war pitting Israel not only against Hezbollah — a more potent force than Hamas — but also its patron Iran.Before dawn on Sunday, Israel’s military said it used about 100 warplanes to strike more than 40 Hezbollah launch sites in Lebanon, saying it had acted to prevent a major attack. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least three people had been killed and two others hurt, and Israel said a soldier was killed and two others wounded during the Hezbollah barrage.The Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised address in Beirut, on Sunday.Bilal Hussein/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Says It Killed Hezbollah Commander in Airstrike Near Beirut

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      The strike was in retaliation for a deadly rocket attack this weekend in the Golan Heights. At least three civilians were killed and 74 others wounded on Tuesday, Lebanese officials said.Israel launched a deadly strike in a densely populated Beirut suburb on Tuesday in retaliation for a rocket attack in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights that it blamed Hezbollah for and that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field.The target of the Israeli strike in a southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital was Fuad Shukr, a senior official who serves as a close adviser to Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, according to three Israeli security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.The Israel Defense Forces later said in a statement that its fighter jets had “eliminated” Mr. Shukr, but there was no confirmation from Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed group, and the claim could not be independently verified.Hezbollah has denied carrying out the attack in the Golan Heights on Saturday. The latest strikes were likely to fuel concerns that Israel’s long-running conflict with the group could escalate into a full-blown war even as Israel wages a military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after that group led a deadly assault in Israel on Oct. 7.The attack on Tuesday is believed to be the first time since the war with Hamas began that Israel has targeted Hezbollah in Beirut. In January, an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut suburb killed Saleh al-Arouri, a senior leader of Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.The strike on Tuesday killed at least three other people — a woman and two children — and wounded at least 74 others, five critically, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health. Officials were still searching the rubble for other victims, the ministry said. More

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      Netanyahu Vows ‘Severe’ Response to Deadly Rocket Attack Tied to Hezbollah

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      Fears linger among Lebanese civilians after a strike killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.Tensions were high on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border on Monday as Israeli leaders vowed to deliver a significant military blow against the armed group Hezbollah in response to a deadly rocket attack over the weekend.The attack on Saturday killed 12 children and teenagers in the Druse Arab village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia that dominates southern Lebanon and that has been firing rockets into Israel for months, denied responsibility for the strike. But Israel and the United States blamed the group, saying it was Hezbollah’s rocket that had been fired from territory it controls.Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited the site of the attack on Monday, said, “Our response is coming, and it will be severe.” Local residents heckled Mr. Netanyahu, telling him they had no security and chanting, “Murderer! Murderer!” videos posted on social media showed.Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Majdal Shams came the morning after Israeli cabinet ministers authorized him and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to determine the nature and timing of the military response. The strike and Israel’s expected counterattack have raised fears that nearly 10 months of armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could spiral into an all-out war.Hezbollah began firing rockets, antitank missiles and drones into Israel in solidarity with Hamas after that group, which is also backed by Iran, led the deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More