MADRID: Israel has broken international law with its “relentless” bombardment of Gaza that has levelled neighborhoods and killed thousands of Palestinians, a UN rights expert said Thursday.
The comments by Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer who is the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, came as Israel confronts a case taken by South Africa at the UN’s International Court of Justice accusing it of genocide.
Albanese told a Madrid news conference that while Israel has the right to self-defense, international humanitarian law must be respected “to protect people who are not actively involved in combat.”
This meant distinguishing between combatants and civilians and ensuring military attacks are proportionate to avoid excessive harm to civilians, she added.
“Instead what has happened is over 100 days of relentless bombing — the first two weeks using 6,000 bombs per week, bombs of 2,000 pounds, in highly crowded area.” Albanese said.
“Most hospitals have been made dysfunctional. A good number of them, the major ones, have been closed, bombed or taken over by the army. People are dying now not only because of the bombs but because there is not sufficient health infrastructure to cure them of wounds.
“The number of kids who get amputated every day is shocking, one or two limbs. During the first two months of this (war) 1,000 kids were amputated without anaesthesia. It is a monstrosity,” she added.
Fighting has ravaged the Palestinian territory since Hamas fighters launched an attack in southern Israel that resulted in the death of about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel has responded with a relentless bombardment and a ground offensive, killing at least 24,620 Palestinians, around 70 percent of them women, children and adolescents, according to Gaza health ministry figures.
Special Rapporteurs are not UN staff but are independent experts named by the UN human rights commission who monitor rights areas.
Albanese said she “firmly condemned” the violence carried out by Hamas, which she said amounted to war crimes and may also be crimes against humanity, but “nothing justifies what Israel has done.”
South Africa took its case to the International Court of Justice last week. But it has been fiercely resisted by Israel with support from the United States and other allies.
UN expert says Israel’s Gaza offensive breaches international law
https://arab.news/n77nm
UN expert says Israel’s Gaza offensive breaches international law
- “The number of kids who get amputated every day is shocking, one or two limbs," Albanese says
Sudan drone attack on Darfur market kills 10: rescuers
- According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 50,000 civilians have fled the region since the end of October
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone attack on a busy market in Sudan’s North Darfur state killed 10 people over the weekend, first responders said on Sunday, without saying who was responsible.
The attack comes as fighting intensified elsewhere in the country, leading aid workers to be evacuated on Sunday from Kadugli, a besieged, famine-hit city in the south.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in a conflict which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
The North Darfur Emergency Rooms Council, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across Sudan, said a drone strike hit Al-Harra market in the RSF-controlled town of Malha on Saturday.
The attack killed 10 people, it said.
The council did not identify who carried out the attack, which it said had also sparked “fire in shops and caused extensive material damage.”
There was no immediate comment from either the Sudanese army or the RSF.
The war’s current focal point is now South Kordofan and clashes have escalated in Kadugli, the state capital, where a drone attack last week killed eight people as they attempted to flee the army-controlled city.
A source from a humanitarian organization operating in Kadugli told AFP on Sunday that humanitarian groups had “evacuated all their workers” from the city because of the security conditions.
The evacuation followed the United Nations’ decision to relocate its logistics hub from Kadugli, the source said on condition of anonymity, without specifying where the staff had gone.
- Measles outbreak -
Kadugli and nearby Dilling have been besieged by paramilitary forces since the war erupted.
Last week, the RSF claimed control of the Brno area, a key defensive line on the road between Kadugli and Dilling.
After dislodging the army in October from the western city of El-Fasher — its last stronghold in the Darfur region — the RSF has shifted its focus to resource-rich Kordofan, a strategic crossroads linking army-held northern and eastern territories with RSF-held Darfur in the west.
Like Darfur, Kordofan is home to numerous non-Sudanese Arab ethnic groups. Much of the violence that followed the fall of El-Fasher was reportedly ethnically targeted.
Communications in Kordofan have been cut, and the United Nations declared a famine in Kadugli last month.
According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 50,000 civilians have fled the region since the end of October.
Residents have been forced to forage for food in nearby forests, according to accounts gathered by AFP.
The conflict has effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the north, east and center while the RSF dominates all five state capitals in Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
Doctors without Borders (MSF) said on Sunday that measles was spreading in three of the four states in Darfur, a vast region covering much of western Sudan.
“A preventable measles outbreak is spreading across Central, South and West Darfur,” the organization said in a statement.
“Since September 2025, MSF teams have treated more than 1,300 cases. Delays in vaccine transport, approvals and coordination, by authorities and key partners are leaving children unprotected.”
