UN expert report says Israel violated international law with attack on Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus
A group of independent experts appointed by the UN human rights council has said Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus violated international law.
In the report, special rapporteurs and independent experts said “retaliatory military attacks between Israel and Iran violate the right to life and must cease immediately.”
The report said:
“All countries are prohibited from arbitrarily depriving individuals of their right to life in military operations abroad, including when countering terrorism,” said the experts. “Killings in foreign territory are arbitrary when they are not authorised under international law,” they said.
The experts said Israel does not appear to have been exercising self-defence on 1 April because it presented no evidence that Iran was directly committing an “armed attack” on Israel or sending non-state armed groups to attack it. The experts noted that Israel has not provided any legal justification for the strike or reported it to the Security Council, as required by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
“Israel’s attack consequently violated the prohibition on the use of armed force against another state under Article 2(4) of the Charter,” the experts said.
Tehran blamed Israel for the strike on its diplomatic building in Syria’s capital, which killed top military leaders. Israel has neither confirmed or denied it carried out the strike, and rarely comments on such operations.
Key events
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said there has been “no significant change” in the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip,
In its latest situational update published today, Unrwa said an average of 181 aid trucks have crossed into Gaza per day through land crossings from Israel and Egypt so far in April, adding:
This remains well below the operational capacity of both border crossings and the target of 500 trucks per day.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, told reporters last week that Israel planned to “flood Gaza with aid” and increase deliveries to 500 truckloads per day.
Peter Beaumont
The United Nations has voiced grave concern over escalating violence in the West Bank, demanding that Israeli security forces “immediately” stop supporting settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territory, reports Peter Beaumont.
The statement from the UN’s human rights office was issued hours after two Palestinian men were killed by Israeli settlers in a northern village south of Nablus, in the latest violent attack involving settlers in the increasingly tense West Bank.
Palestinians said the incident followed a clash when settlers entered Palestinian-owned land and assaulted residents, while settlers said it began with an assault on a Jewish person.
Tensions in the West Bank have escalated sharply since the killing of a 14-year-old boy from a settler family at the weekend.
Monday’s violence brought to eight the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or armed settlers since Friday, as Palestinian authorities reported increased settler rampages across the West Bank. Palestinian eyewitnesses and video suggested that Israeli security forces had been present, standing by at some of the incidents.
Salah Bani Jaber, the mayor of Aqraba, a town near the northern city of Nablus, witnessed Monday’s settler attack. He said about 50 settlers, many of them armed, attacked members of his community and fired at Palestinian youths, killing two of them and wounding others.
“There were Israeli soldiers at the scene who stood idly by watching the settlers,” he said.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said soldiers blocked its ambulances from reaching the area and tending to the wounded. The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident.
Vladimir Putin urged all sides in the Middle East to refrain from action that would trigger a new confrontation which he warned would be fraught with catastrophic consequences for the region, the Kremlin said.
Putin, who has forged close ties with Iran since sending troops into Ukraine in 2022, spoke to its president, Ebrahim Raisi, by phone about what the Kremlin called “retaliatory measures taken by Iran. Putin, in his first publicly aired comments on Iran’s attack, said that the root cause of the current instability in the Middle East was the unresolved conflict between Palestinians and Israel.
“Ebrahim Raisi noted that Iran’s actions were forced and limited in nature,” the Kremlin said. “At the same time, he stressed Tehran’s disinterest in further escalation of tensions.
“Both sides stated that the root cause of the current events in the Middle East is the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In this regard, the principled approaches of Russia and Iran in favour of an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, easing the difficult humanitarian situation, and creating conditions for a political and diplomatic settlement of the crisis were confirmed.”
Israeli tanks pushed back into some areas of the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday which they had left weeks ago, while warplanes conducted air strikes on Rafah, the Palestinians’ last refuge in the south of the territory, killing and wounding several people, medics and residents said.
Reuters reports that residents said there had been an internet outage in the areas of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in northern Gaza. Tanks advanced into Beit Hanoun and surrounded some schools where displaced families have taken refuge, said the residents and media outlets of the militant Palestinian group Hamas.
“Occupation soldiers ordered all families inside the schools and the nearby houses where the tanks had advanced to evacuate. The soldiers detained many men,” one resident of northern Gaza told Reuters via a chat app.
Beit Hanoun, home to 60,000 people, was one of the first areas targeted by Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza last October. Many families who had returned to Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in recent weeks after Israeli forces withdrew, began moving out again on Tuesday because of the new raid, some residents said.
Palestinian health officials said in one strike, Israel killed four people and wounded several others in Rafah, where over half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are sheltering and bracing for a planned Israeli ground offensive into the city, which borders Egypt.
The Israeli military said its forces continued to operate in the central Gaza Strip and that they had killed several gunmen who attempted to attack them. “Furthermore, over the past day, IDF fighter jets and aircraft destroyed a missile launcher along with dozens of terrorist infrastructure, terror tunnels, and military compounds where armed Hamas terrorists were located,” it added.
In Al-Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, residents said Israeli planes had bombed and destroyed four multi-storey residential buildings on Tuesday.
Zeina Khodr, a senior correspondent at Al Jazeera English television, has posted to social media to report that Israel’s army radio has claimed the target of a strike inside Lebanon by Israel’s military in the last hour or so was “a senior Hezbollah field commander”.
The strike appears to have come as a rapid retaliation for a drone strike inside Israel which Hezbollah has claimed, saying it was targeting missile defence systems. Three Israelis are reported wounded in that incident today.
Yesterday Israel’s military said four Israeli soldiers were wounded by an explosion when they were operating inside Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed it set off the explosion.
Kremlin says in a call with Putin, Iran’s president Raisi played down interest in escalation with Israel
The state-owned RIA news agency in Russia has posted to its Telegram channel a read-out via the Kremlin of a call between Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi.
It reported:
Putin and Raisi discussed the situation in the Middle East in a telephone conversation after Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus and Tehran’s retaliatory measures, the Kremlin said.
Putin expressed the hope that all parties will show reasonable restraint and not allow a new round of confrontation.
The Iranian president noted that Iran’s actions were forced and limited in nature, and emphasised his disinterest in further escalation.
Local media in Lebanon is reporting that one person has been killed in an Israeli strike on a vehicle inside Lebanon.
More details soon …
Haaretz is reporting that three people were wounded by the two drones crossing into Israel from Lebanon.
More details soon …
Israel’s military has reported that two drones from the direction of Lebanon crossed into Israeli territory “and exploded in the area of Beit Hillel”. There were no reports of damage or casualties given. The IDF said “the incident is under review”.
Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah for Al Jazeera, has told the news network that the Israeli military has not stopped its bombardment of Gaza City.
He writes:
One of the latest attacks carried out by drone targeted a civilian car, causing a number of injuries. The majority of areas have also been under constant Israeli shelling over the past hours.
Reuters reports that US house speaker Mike Johnson has told Fox News that spending legislation will be released later on Tuesday, as the House prepares to vote on four separate measures providing aid to Israel and Ukraine. One of the bills will also include additional sanctions on Russia and Iran.
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock has also said that a number of European nations have said they would take another look at extending an existing EU sanctions regime against Iran that targets drone production.
UN expert report says Israel violated international law with attack on Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus
A group of independent experts appointed by the UN human rights council has said Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus violated international law.
In the report, special rapporteurs and independent experts said “retaliatory military attacks between Israel and Iran violate the right to life and must cease immediately.”
The report said:
“All countries are prohibited from arbitrarily depriving individuals of their right to life in military operations abroad, including when countering terrorism,” said the experts. “Killings in foreign territory are arbitrary when they are not authorised under international law,” they said.
The experts said Israel does not appear to have been exercising self-defence on 1 April because it presented no evidence that Iran was directly committing an “armed attack” on Israel or sending non-state armed groups to attack it. The experts noted that Israel has not provided any legal justification for the strike or reported it to the Security Council, as required by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
“Israel’s attack consequently violated the prohibition on the use of armed force against another state under Article 2(4) of the Charter,” the experts said.
Tehran blamed Israel for the strike on its diplomatic building in Syria’s capital, which killed top military leaders. Israel has neither confirmed or denied it carried out the strike, and rarely comments on such operations.
Budget airline easyJet has extended its suspension of flights to and from Israel until late October, PA Media reports.
German foreign minister Baerbock to head to Israel
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock will travel to Israel on Tuesday for discussions on how to prevent an escalation of tensions in the region, Reuters reports she said in Berlin.
She is quoted as saying at a join news conference with her Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi that “It is incredibly important for us as the German federal government in these fragile times that we all work together to contribute to de-escalation for the entire region.”
For his part, Safadi said that the international community should not allow Benjamin Netanyahu to let confrontation with Iran draw attention away from the situation in Gaza, where Israel has been conducting a military operation for six months and health authorities there report over 33,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Israel’s war cabinet to meet again to discuss response to Iran’s attack
Israel’s war cabinet will meet on Tuesday to discuss the response to Iran’s attack over the weekend, an Israeli official said.
Reuters reports the official said no time was set for meeting.
It will be the third time that the decision-making cabinet convenes since Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones against Israel on Saturday night.
The Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, has given the clearest confirmation so far that Israel would strike back, saying “This launch of so many missiles, cruise missiles and drones into Israeli territory will be met with a response.”
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi is reported to have said in a call with Qatar’s emir that “We now categorically declare that the smallest action against Iranian interests will certainly be met with a severe, widespread and painful response against all its perpetrators.”
On state TV in Iran, deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani said that his country would not wait 12 days to respond to another Israeli attack, but would retaliate in “a matter of seconds.”
There have been widespread calls for calm in the international community, keen to avoid the situation escalating after Tehran launched its first ever direct state-on-state attack against Israel. Iran blames Israel for an attack on its consulate in Damascus on 1 April which killed senior military figures. Israel has neither confirmed or denied it carried out the strike inside Syria, and rarely comments on such missions.
Israel’s war cabinet consists of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and Benny Gantz, the former defence minister and centrist Netanyahu rival.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us from Gaza over the news wires.
