Switzerland

GENEVA, Jan 9 (Reuters) - U.N. experts in international law on Tuesday condemned the killing of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri and other fighters in drone strikes on Lebanon, saying this amounted to the crimes of extrajudicial killings and murder.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it assassinated Arouri but his demise came a month after Israel's domestic security agency Shin Bet vowed to hunt down Hamas in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar even if took years, following Hamas's cross-border rampage from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7.

GENEVA, Jan 3 (Reuters) - United Nations experts urged U.S. authorities on Wednesday to halt the planned execution of a prisoner by asphyxiation using pure nitrogen, saying the untested method may subject him to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture."

Kenneth Smith, convicted for a murder-for-hire committed in 1988, is scheduled to be executed in the U.S. state of Alabama on Jan. 25 using the method, which is intended to deprive him of oxygen by using a face mask connected to a cylinder of nitrogen.

GENEVA, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Tuesday that Israel and the United States will never be able to wipe out Hamas and that Israel could only secure the release of hostages held in Gaza with a political solution to the conflict.

In a speech at the United Nations in Geneva in which he described the Islamist group as a freedom movement, Amirabdollahian said: "Israel and the United States will never be able to eliminate Hamas."

GENEVA, Dec 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United Nations said that it needed $46.4 billion next year to bring life-saving help to around 180 million people in desperate circumstances around the world.

The UN said the global humanitarian outlook for 2024 was “bleak”, with conflicts, climate emergencies and collapsing economies “wreaking havoc” on the most vulnerable.

While global attention focuses on the conflict raging in the Gaza Strip, the UN said the wider Middle East, Sudan and Afghanistan were among the hotspots that also needed major international aid operations.

SION, Switzerland, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Police launched a manhunt after a shooter killed two people and wounded a third in the Swiss Alpine town of Sion early on Monday.

A 36-year-old man fired several shots in two parts of the town, police said.

Initial research suggested he knew his victims, but investigators were still working on establishing his motive, police added.

Officers cordoned off the scene and set up a checkpoint, stopping and searching cars on the main road out of the surrounding southwestern canton of Valais.

GENEVA, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board adopted a resolution on Sunday, urging for prompt and unobstructed humanitarian aid access to the Gaza Strip.

At the request of 17 member states, the Executive Board convened a special session at the WHO headquarters in Geneva to discuss the health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem.

5 December 2023; MEMO: The head of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA), on Monday, said the Israeli resumption and expansion of its military operation across Gaza repeats “the horrors from past weeks”, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The resumption of the military operation and its expansion further in southern Gaza is repeating horrors from past weeks,” UNRWA Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a statement.

GENEVA, Dec 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Climate change is making the fight against malaria even harder, with the campaign already struggling to make up ground lost during the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization warned.

“The changing climate poses a substantial risk to progress against malaria, particularly in vulnerable regions,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as the WHO published its World Malaria Report.

GENEVA, Nov 29 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Wednesday called for the international community to move towards a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, saying Jerusalem should serve as the capital of both states.

"It is long past time to move in a determined, irreversible way towards a two-state solution, on the basis of United Nations resolutions and international law," said Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General of the U.N. office in Geneva, delivering a speech authored by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

GENEVA, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Sunday that evidence suggested a misfired rocket was the likely cause of an explosion that resulted in heavy casualties at a hospital in Gaza on Oct. 17.

The explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital triggered outrage across the Arab world. Palestinians blamed an Israeli air strike, while Israel said it was caused by a misfiring Palestinian rocket launch.