Category World News

At least 21 Palestinians have been killed in the latest carnage at the GHF aid distribution centre in southern Gaza, with most of the victims reported to have died in a stampede.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health has disputed the allegation from the controversial United States- and Israel-backed organisation that armed agitators were responsible for the incident on Wednesday morning at the site in Khan Younis.

In an earlier statement, the GHF had said 19 victims were trampled and another was stabbed “amid a chaotic and dangerous surge”.

Without providing any evidence, it said the stampede had been provoked by “elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas”.

The statement also claimed that GHF staff saw multiple weapons in the crowd and that one of its US contractors was threatened with a gun.

However, Palestinian authorities and witnesses have vehemently contested the GHF’s version of events.

Gaza’s Health Ministry released a statement saying 21 Palestinians had been killed at the GHF site on Wednesday. It noted that 15 of the victims died as a result of a stampede and suffocation after tear gas was fired at crowds of aid seekers.

“️For the first time, deaths have been recorded due to suffocation and the intense stampede of citizens at aid distribution centres,” the ministry added.

Speaking from Gaza City on Wednesday, Al Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud said a witness had confirmed that tear gas was fired on the crowd, “causing mayhem and chaos”, which led to a stampede.

Meanwhile, a medical source at Nasser Hospital told the AFP news agency that the desperate and starving victims had been trying to receive food, but the main gate to the distribution centre had been closed.

“The Israeli occupation forces and the centre’s private security personnel opened fire on them, resulting in a large number of deaths and injuries,” they said.

Since the GHF started operating in the enclave in late May, at least 875 people have been killed trying to get food, according to the United Nations, which said on Tuesday that 674 of these deaths had occurred “in the vicinity of GHF sites”.

Speaking last week, UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said most of the casualties had suffered “gunshot injuries”.

Both the Israeli army and GHF contractors have been accused of carrying out the killings.

The UN has described the GHF sites as “death traps”, calling them “inherently unsafe” and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards.

Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, said on Wednesday that the GHF was guilty of gross mismanagement.

“People who flock in their thousands (to GHF sites) are hungry and exhausted, and they get squeezed into narrow places, amid shortages of aid and the absence of organisation and discipline by the GHF,” he said.

The latest deaths near aid distribution centres came as an Israeli attack on a camp of displaced people in al-Mawasi killed nine people.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, has been warned that if arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are not withdrawn, he and the ICC would be “destroyed”, the Middle East Eye (MEE) reports.

The warning was delivered in May to Khan by Nicholas Kaufman, a British-Israeli defence lawyer at the court linked to a Netanyahu adviser who said the Israeli leader’s legal adviser told him he was “authorised” to make Khan a proposal that would allow Khan to “climb down the tree”, the news website said.

According to a note of the meeting on file at the ICC and seen by MEE, Kaufman told Khan to apply to the court to reclassify the warrants and underlying information as “confidential”.

This, it was suggested, would allow Israel to access the details of the allegations, which it could not do at the time, and challenge them in private – without the outcome being made public.

Kaufman warned Khan that if it emerged Khan was applying for more arrest warrants for far-right Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over their promotion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, then “all options would be off the table.”

Kaufman told Khan: “They will destroy you, and they will destroy the court.”

The ICC issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Deif in November on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and Israel’s subsequent genocidal war in Gaza. Deif has since been confirmed dead.

Since then, the Israeli defendants are internationally wanted suspects, and ICC member states are under legal obligation to arrest them although several have been wary to agree to it.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, hit out this month against countries that have allowed Netanyahu to fly over their airspace en route to the United States, suggesting that they may have flouted their obligations under international law.

Albanese said the governments of Italy, France and Greece needed to explain why they provided “safe passage” to Netanyahu, who they were theoretically “obligated to arrest” as an internationally wanted suspect when he flew over their territory on his way to meet US President Donald Trump for talks.

All three countries are signatories of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established The Hague-based ICC in 2002.

Kaufman told MEE: “I do not deny that I told Mr Khan that he should be looking for a way to extricate himself from his errors. I am not authorised to make any proposals on behalf of the Israeli government nor did I.”

Khan and his wife, Dato Shyamala Alagendra, who also attended the meeting with Kaufman, both confirmed this to be a threat, according to the note of the meeting seen by MEE.

Netanyahu’s office did not respond to requests for comment from MEE.

At the time of the meeting, Khan was facing investigation over sexual misconduct claims. Two weeks later, Khan stepped down on indefinite leave after the publication by The Wall Street Journal of new allegations of sexual assault.

Khan has strenuously denied all the allegations against him.

MEE revealed details of Khan’s meeting with Kaufman on May 1 at a hotel in The Hague.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has called China’s open-source artificial intelligence a “catalyst for global progress” and says it is “revolutionising” supply chains.

In a speech during Wednesday’s opening ceremony of the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing, Huang – whose firm last week became the first to touch $4 trillion in market value – hailed China’s role in pioneering AI, describing Chinese AI startup DeepSeek as “giving every country and industry a chance to join the AI revolution”.

Huang made the comments a day after Nvidia announced it will resume sales of its H20 AI chips to China after the United States government pledged to remove licensing restrictions that had halted exports.

“AI is transforming every industry from scientific research and healthcare to energy, transportation and logistics,” said Huang, who also praised China’s “super-fast” innovation, powered by its “researchers, developers and entrepreneurs”.

The California-based company produces some of the world’s most advanced semiconductors but cannot ship its most cutting-edge chips to China due to Washington’s concerns that Beijing could use them to enhance its military capabilities.

Nvidia developed the H20 – a less powerful version of its AI processing units – specifically for export to China. However, that plan stalled when US President Donald Trump’s administration tightened export licensing requirements in April.

“Huang says he’s now free to sell to the Chinese market thanks to negotiations with China on trade,” Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu said, reporting from Beijing. “The Trump administration has confirmed that in exchange for rare earths, it will allow the chip to now be sold into China.”

“The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that it was “filing applications to sell the Nvidia H20 GPU again”.

Nvidia has also announced it is developing a new chip for Chinese clients called the RTX Pro GPU, which would also be compliant with US export restrictions.

The announcement from Nvidia boosted tech firm stocks around the world with Wall Street’s Nasdaq Composite index rising to another record high and stocks in Hong Kong also rallying.

The tightened US export curbs were imposed as China’s economy wavers. Domestic consumers are reluctant to spend, and a prolonged property sector crisis is weighing on growth.

President Xi Jinping has called for greater self-reliance in the face of increasing external uncertainty.