Israel is preventing UN investigators from speaking to witnesses and victims of the October 7 Hamas attack, former UN rights chief Navi Pillay, who is chairing a three-person probe, said Tuesday.
The unprecedented Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The looming threat of a war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is reviving painful memories for former Lebanese militiamen and their families who fled to Israel, their erstwhile ally, more than 20 years ago.
The South Lebanon Army was a mostly Christian militia recruited by Israel when it occupied south Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s.
Gulf states are grappling with the widening Middle East conflict as hostilities between Iran and Israel threaten their security and ambitious plans to reshape their economies.
Leaders of the resource-rich Gulf monarchies engaged in a rapid round of diplomacy after last weekend's Iranian drone and missile strikes on Israel raised the spectre of a regional conflagration.
The desert countries lie across the Gulf from Iran, placing them on the doorstep of the latest crisis after months of tensions generated by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Israel's armed forces chief has vowed to respond to Iran's unprecedented attack against the country, even after appeals for restraint poured in from world leaders fearing wider regional conflict.
During six months of war between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hamas in Gaza, Iran's proxies around the region have stepped up attacks on Israel and its allies, saying they are acting in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden said Monday he wants to prevent the Middle East conflict from spreading but vowed to defend Israel after Iran launched an unprecedented aerial attack on the key US ally.
Biden also reiterated his desire for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas following the October 7 attacks.
"Iran launched an unprecedented aerial attack against Israel, and we launched an unprecedented military effort to defend it. Together with our partners, we defended that attack," Biden said as he met Iraq's prime minister at the White House.
Lawyer Omar Ushari still remembers the hope that gripped Khartoum after the uprising that overthrew dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Now after a year of war between rival generals, much of the Sudanese capital lies in ruins.
The 37-year-old, then detained for his activism, celebrated behind bars when Bashir was toppled in a palace coup.
In the heady days that followed, as the army promised a transition to elective civilian rule, Ushari was released, and set to work on his dream project: a literary cafe near the banks of the Nile.
US President Joe Biden will meet Iraq's Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani at the White House Monday, after Iran's attack on Israel sent tensions soaring across the Middle East.
Sudani's trip to Washington, his first since taking office in October 2022, was originally expected to focus on the presence of US troops in Iraq as part of an anti-jihadist coalition.
But the meeting will now be dominated by the fractious situation in the region after Iraq's neighbor Iran launched a massive missile and drone assault on Israel on Saturday.
Israel's army chief on Monday vowed a response to Iran's unprecedented attack against the country which has prompted appeals for de-escalation by world leaders fearing wider conflict.
Six months of war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza have triggered violence across the region involving Iranian proxies and allies who say they act in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
But tensions have surged even higher with Tehran's first direct assault on Israel, in retaliation for a deadly April 1 strike on Iran's consulate in Damascus.
President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that France would help do everything to avoid an escalation in the Middle East after an unprecedented Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel.
Iran launched its first-ever direct assault on Israeli territory late Saturday in retaliation for a deadly April 1 air strike on Tehran's consulate building in Syria's capital Damascus that was widely blamed on Israel.
"We will do everything to avoid a conflagration -- that is to say an escalation," Macron told the BFMTV news channel.
Neria Goelman and Hannah Zedek, who both escaped the bloody Hamas attack on the Nova music festival in southern Israel six months ago, have found the bush they were searching for.
"It was in this bush that we hid for four hours," Goelman said, standing in front of the shrub.
"Then it caught fire because the terrorists fired grenade launchers and we had to flee," added the 21-year-old, who along with Zedek, 20, had been security guards at the festival.
