JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said Wednesday that it has reopened its Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza after days of closure, but the UN said no

humanitarian aid

has yet entered and there is no one to receive it on the Palestinian side after workers fled during Israel’s military incursion in the area.

The Kerem Shalom crossing between Gaza and Israel was closed over the weekend after a Hamas rocket attack killed four Israeli soldiers nearby, and on Tuesday, an Israeli tank brigade seized the nearby

Rafah crossing

between Gaza and Egypt, forcing its closure.

The two facilities are the main terminals for entry of food, medicine and other supplies essential for the survival of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians.

The Israeli foray did not appear to be the start of the full-scale invasion of the city of Rafah that Israel has repeatedly promised. But aid officials warn that the prolonged closure of the two crossings could cause the collapse of aid operations, worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the UN says a “full-blown famine” is already underway in the north.

The United States paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on Rafah, in a further widening of divisions between the two close allies.

And on Wednesday, President Joe Biden said he would not supply offensive weapons that Israel could use to launch a full-scale assault on Rafah.

Biden, in an interview with CNN, said the US was still committed to Israel’s defense and would supply Iron Dome rocket interceptors and other defensive arms, but that if Israel goes into Rafah, “we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells used, that have been used.”

The US says it is concerned over the fate of around 1.3 million Palestinians crammed into Rafah, most of whom fled fighting elsewhere.

The US, Egypt and Qatar are meanwhile ramping up efforts to close the gaps in a possible agreement for at least a temporary

cease-fire

and the release of some of the scores of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas. Israel has linked the threatened Rafah operation to the fate of those negotiations.

CIA chief William Burns, who has been shuttling around the region for talks on the cease-fire deal, met Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door negotiations.

With the seizure of Rafah, Israel now controls all of Gaza’s crossings for the first time since it withdrew troops and settlers from the territory nearly two decades ago, though it has maintained a blockade with Egypt’s cooperation for most of that time.

The Rafah crossing has been a vital conduit for humanitarian aid since the start of the war and is the only place where people can enter and exit. Kerem Shalom is Gaza’s main cargo terminal.

The UN World Food Program deputy executive director, Carl Skau, told The Associated Press that the agency has lost access to its Gaza food warehouse in Rafah, which he said was “communicated as a no-go zone.”

“We understand that it’s still there, but we are extremely worried of looting,” Skau said during a visit to neighboring Lebanon, adding that a UN logistics warehouse in Rafah had already been looted.

He said the WFP was able to secure a warehouse in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, but has not stocked it with food yet.

Associated Press journalists heard sporadic explosions and gunfire in the area of the Rafah crossing overnight, including two large blasts early Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon, hospital records showed at least 25 people were wounded after Israeli artillery fire struck a part of central Rafah, an area Israel did not call on Palestinians to evacuate ahead of its operation.

The military had no immediate comment.

An Israeli military official said that Hamas had fired unidentified projectiles at Kerem Shalom on Wednesday, confirming an earlier claim from the militant group. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity pending an official announcement, said the attack would make it difficult to continue aid deliveries but that the crossing would reopen Thursday.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, said the Kerem Shalom crossing reopened early Wednesday and released video of what it said were aid trucks entering the 1-kilometer-long (half-mile) area of the crossing. The video then showed their cargo being unloaded. Typically, Palestinian drivers from the other side of the crossing must pick up the aid after it is unloaded and drive it to distribution destinations within Gaza.

The video did not show the aid being picked up.

Juliette Touma, the director of communications for UNRWA, said no aid had entered as of late afternoon Wednesday and that the UN agency had been forced to ration fuel, which is imported through Rafah.

Gaza’s Health Ministry meanwhile said at least 46 patients and wounded people who had been scheduled to leave Tuesday for medical treatment have been left stranded.

UN agencies and aid groups have ramped up humanitarian assistance in recent weeks as Israel has lifted some restrictions and opened an additional crossing in the north under pressure from the United States, its closest ally.

But aid workers say the closure of Rafah, which is the only gateway for the entry of fuel for trucks and generators, could have severe repercussions, and the UN says northern Gaza is already in a state of “full-blown famine.”

Skau of the WFP said some food has been delivered to the north in recent weeks.

“When we got up there, people were coming out of the rubble extremely weak, not even able to carry the box of food,” he said, adding that an increase in infectious diseases among children could worsen the crisis in the north.

“It’s that combination of widespread disease and acute malnutrition that is that deadly cocktail,” he said.

COGAT said 60 aid trucks entered through the northern crossing on Tuesday. Some 500 trucks entered Gaza every day before the war.

The war began when Hamas militants breached Israel’s defenses on Oct. 7 and swept through nearby army bases and farming communities, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250.

Hamas is still believed to be holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others after most of the rest were released during a November cease-fire.

The war has killed over 34,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, and has driven some 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians from their homes. Israel’s military campaign has been one of the deadliest and most destructive in recent history, reducing large parts of Gaza to rubble.

Biden has repeatedly warned Netanyahu against launching an invasion of Rafah. But Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners have threatened to bring down his government if he calls off an offensive or makes too many concessions in the cease-fire talks.

The US has historically provided Israel with enormous amounts of military aid, which has only accelerated since the start of the war.

The paused shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs and 1,700 smaller ones, with the US concern focused on how the larger bombs could be used in a dense urban setting, a US official said Tuesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

The official said no final decision had been made yet on proceeding with the shipment.

Residents inspect the damage to a house in Shahkot Village, Neelum Valley, Pakistani Kashmir, May 13, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

Item 1 of 2 Residents inspect the damage to a house in Shahkot Village, Neelum Valley, Pakistani Kashmir, May 13, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer

Summary U.S. played key role in brokering ceasefire, just days after Vance downplayed need to act

Vance call to Modi followed Oval Office discussion with Trump

Indian strike on Pakistani air base near nuclear-planning body caused alarm

Rubio pushed both Islamabad and Delhi to de-escalate

ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI, May 14 (Reuters) – At 2.09 a.m. on Saturday, Ahmad Subhan, who lives near an air base in the Pakistan military garrison city of Rawalpindi, heard the first explosion that rattled the windows of his house – and took South Asia to the brink of war.

As dawn broke, the heaviest fighting in decades between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan reached a crescendo, after nearly three weeks of escalating tensions.

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Fighter jets and missiles crisscrossed the skies of one of the world’s most populated regions. Pakistani officials said they would convene an emergency meeting of their top nuclear decision-making body.

The critical eight-hour window also saw Indian missile barrages on three major Pakistani air bases and other facilities, including Nur Khan, which is ringed by civilian homes like Subhan’s, and just a 20-minute drive to the capital, Islamabad.

After the initial blast, Subhan and his wife grabbed their three children and ran out of their home. “We were just figuring out what had happened when there was another explosion,” said the retired government employee, who remembered the precise time of the strike because he was just about to make a call.

This account of Saturday’s events – which began with the looming specter of a full-blown war and ended with an evening cease-fire announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump – is based on interviews with more than a dozen people, including U.S., Indian and Pakistani officials, as well as Reuters’ review of public statements from the three capitals.

They described the rapid escalation of hostilities as well as behind-the-scenes diplomacy involving the U.S., India and Pakistan, and underscore the key role played by Washington in brokering peace.

The attack on Nur Khan air base saw at least two missile strikes as well as drone attacks, according to Subhan and two Pakistani security officials, who like some of the people interviewed by Reuters, spoke on condition of anonymity.

The barrage took out two roofs and hit the hangar of a refuelling plane, which was airborne at the time, according to one of the officials, who visited the base the next day.

A senior Indian military officer, however, told reporters on Sunday that an operations command center at Nur Khan had been hit.

“The attack on Nur Khan … close to our capital, that left us with no option but to retaliate,” Pakistan Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told Reuters.

Nur Khan is located just over a mile from the military-run body responsible for Pakistan’s nuclear planning.

So, an attack on the facility may have been perceived as more dangerous than India intended – and the two sides should not conclude that it is possible to have a conflict without it going nuclear, said Christopher Clary, an associate professor at the University at Albany in New York.

“If you are playing Russian roulette and pull the trigger, the lesson isn’t that you should pull the trigger again,” said Clary.

India’s defense and foreign ministries, as well as Pakistan’s military and its foreign ministry, did not immediately respond to written questions submitted by Reuters.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson did not directly respond to questions from Reuters about the American role, but said that further military escalation posed a serious threat to regional stability.

In the early hours of May 10, Indian missiles hit Pakistan’s Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, where the headquarters of the nuclear-armed country’s military is located.

VANCE CALLS MODI

India and Pakistan have fought three major wars and been at loggerheads since their independence. The spark for the latest chaos was an April 22 attack in Indian Kashmir that killed 26 people, most of them tourists. New Delhi blamed the incident on “terrorists” backed by Pakistan, a charge denied by Islamabad.

It was the latest of many disputes involving Kashmir, a Himalayan territory ravaged by an anti-India insurgency since the late 1980s. Both New Delhi and Islamabad claim the region in full but only control parts of it.

Hindu-majority India has accused its Muslim-majority neighbor of arming and backing militant groups operating in Kashmir, but Pakistan maintains it only provides diplomatic support to Kashmiri separatists.

After a go-ahead from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indian military on May 7 carried out air strikes on what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan, in response to the April attack in Kashmir.

In air battles that followed, Pakistan said it shot down five Indian aircraft, including prized Rafale planes New Delhi recently acquired from France. India has indicated that it suffered losses and inflicted some of its own.

Senior U.S. officials became seriously concerned by Friday, May 9 that the conflict was at risk of spiralling out of control, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Another source familiar with the matter said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a series of calls from May 6-8 with Indian and Pakistani officials, including with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the foreign ministers and national security advisers of both countries.

Then on the morning of May 9, Rubio and U.S. Vice President JD Vance discussed with Trump in the Oval Office a plan for Vance to call Modi to underscore that Washington “believed there was a high probability for dramatic escalation as the conflict entered its fourth day,” the source said.

“The vice president encouraged Modi to consider de-escalatory options, outlining a potential off-ramp that Secretary Rubio and his staff understood the Pakistanis would be amenable to,” the source added.

Rubio then engaged in “a marathon session of telephone diplomacy” with Indian and Pakistani officials into the early morning of May 10 to get the parties talking and reach an agreement on a ceasefire, the source said.

The U.S. intervention came despite Vance saying publicly on Thursday that the U.S. was “not going to get involved in the middle of war that’s fundamentally none of our business.”

The sources didn’t provide specifics but said Modi was non-committal. One of the people also said that Modi told Vance, who had been visiting India during the Kashmir attack, that any Pakistani escalation would be met by an even more forceful response.

Hours later, according to Indian officials, that escalation came: Pakistan launched attacks on at least 26 locations in India in the early hours of May 10.

Pakistan said their strikes occurred only after the pre-dawn Indian attack on its air bases, including Nur Khan.

NUCLEAR SIGNALS

A little over an hour after that Indian attack began, Pakistan military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry confirmed Indian strikes on three air bases.

Some Indian strikes on Saturday, May 10 also utilized the supersonic BrahMos missile, according to a Pakistani official and an Indian source. Pakistan believes the BrahMos is nuclear-capable, though India says it carries a conventional warhead.

By 5 a.m. local time on Saturday, Pakistan’s military announced it had launched operations against Indian air bases and other facilities.

About two hours later, Pakistani officials told journalists that Prime Minister Sharif had called a meeting of the National Command Authority , which oversees the nuclear arsenal.

Dar told Reuters on Tuesday that any international alarm was overblown: “There was no such concern. There should not be. We are a responsible nation.”

But signalling an intention to convene NCA reflected how much the crisis had escalated and “may also have been an indirect call for external mediation,” said Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based South Asia expert.

About an hour after the NCA announcement, the U.S. said Rubio had spoken to Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir – widely regarded as the most powerful man in that country – and was pushing both sides to de-escalate.

Rubio also soon got on the phone with Dar and Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar.

“Rubio said that Indians were ready to stop,” Dar told Reuters. “I said if they are ready to stop, ask them to stop, we will stop.”

An Indian official with knowledge of Rubio’s call with Jaishankar said that Rubio passed on a message that the Pakistanis were willing to stop firing if India would also cease.

‘GREAT INTELLIGENCE’

Pakistan Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, who only days earlier warned of conflict , dialled into a local TV news channel at around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.

Two-and-a-half hours after Pakistani officials shared news of the NCA meeting, Asif declared that no such event had been scheduled, putting a lid on the matter.

The international intervention anchored by Rubio paved the way to a cessation of hostilities formalized in a mid-afternoon phone call between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMO) of India and Pakistan. The two spoke again on Monday.

Pakistan Lt. Gen. Chaudhry said in a briefing that New Delhi had initially requested a call between the DGMOs after the Indian military’s May 7 strikes across the border.

Islamabad only responded to the request on Saturday, following its retaliation and requests from international interlocutors, according to Chaudhry, who did not name the countries.

Asked about Chaudhry’s remarks, a spokesperson for India’s defense ministry referred Reuters to a statement made by Indian DGMO Lt. Gen. Rajiv Ghai on Sunday. Ghai said he had reached out to his Pakistani counterpart on May 7 after the Indian strikes in Pakistan to communicate New Delhi’s “compulsion to strike” back at “terror” infrastructure, but his request for a call was turned down.

Almost exactly 12 hours after Pakistan said it had launched retaliatory strikes against India for hitting three key air bases on May 10, Trump declared on social media there would be a cessation of hostilities

“Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence,” he said.

Reporting by Saeed Shah, Asif Shahzad and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam in Islamabad, Shivam Patel in New Delhi and Jeff Mason, Andrew Shalal and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Additional reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad and Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Katerina Ang

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Indian Air Force’s Rafale fighter jets fly past during the “Aero India 2021” air show at Yelahanka air base in Bengaluru, India, February 3, 2021. REUTERS/Samuel Rajkumar//File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

Item 1 of 2 Indian Air Force’s Rafale fighter jets fly past during the “Aero India 2021” air show at Yelahanka air base in Bengaluru, India, February 3, 2021. REUTERS/Samuel Rajkumar//File Photo

Summary Analysts believe China’s extensive satellite network deployed

India seen as long-term strategic rival of neighbouring China

Open source intelligence trackers note Chinese fishing boats near Indian naval drills

HONG KONG, May 9 (Reuters) – The conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir offers a potentially rich intelligence harvest for China in its own rivalry with India as it gleans data from its fighter jets and other weapons used in action by Pakistan.

Security analysts and diplomats say China’s military modernisation has reached a point where it has the ability to deeply scrutinise Indian actions in real time from its border installations and Indian Ocean fleets as well as from space.

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“From an intelligence perspective, this is a rare target of opportunity right on China’s borders involving a key potential adversary,” said Singapore-based security analyst Alexander Neill.

Two U.S. officials said a Chinese-made J-10 Pakistani jet fighter shot down at least two Indian military planes – one of them a French-made Rafale fighter. India has not acknowledged the loss of any of its planes while Pakistan’s defence and foreign ministers have confirmed the use of J-10 aircraft but not commented on which missiles or other weapons were used.

The aerial clash is a rare opportunity for militaries around the world to study the performance of pilots, fighter jets and air-to-air missiles in active combat, and use that knowledge to prepare their own air forces for battle.

Competing regional giants and nuclear powers, India and China are widely seen as long-term strategic rivals, sharing a 3,800 (2,400 mile) Himalayan border that has been disputed since the 1950s and sparked a brief war in 1962.

The most recent standoff – that started in 2020 – thawed in October as the two sides struck a patrolling agreement.

Security analysts say both sides have taken steps to strengthen their military facilities and capabilities along the border, but it is also from above that China packs an intelligence gathering punch.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) notes that China now fields 267 satellites – including 115 devoted to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and a further 81 that monitor military electronic and signals information. It is a network that dwarfs its regional rivals, including India, and is second only to the U.S..

“Both in terms of space and missile tracking capabilities, China is much better off now in terms of being able to monitor things as they happen,” said Neill, who is an adjunct fellow at Hawaii’s Pacific Forum think-tank.

China’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions about the deployment of its military satellites and other questions about its intelligence gathering.

Pakistan’s military media wing and information minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment on any information sharing with China.

Pakistan has previously said it has an “all-weather strategic, cooperative partnership” with China.

India has not commented on the issue, but its top diplomat in Britain, High Commissioner Vikram Doraiswami, told Sky News on Thursday that China’s relationship with Pakistan was not a concern for India.

“China requires a relationship with all of its neighbours, that includes us,” he said.

MISSILE DEPLOYMENTS

Chinese military intelligence teams would be eager to garner information on any Indian use of air defences and launches of cruise and ballistic missiles – not just in terms of flight paths and accuracy but command and control information, analysts and diplomats say.

Any deployment of India’s BrahMos supersonic cruise missile – a weapon it developed jointly with Russia – would be of particular interest, some analysts say, given they do not believe it has been used in combat.

China has also beefed up its intelligence gathering at sea. It has been increasingly active in the Indian Ocean in recent years, with China deploying space tracking ships as well as oceanographic research and fishing vessels on extended deployments, open source intelligence trackers say.

Regional diplomats say that while the Chinese navy has been relatively cautious about extensive warship deployments into the Indian Ocean, still lacking a broad network of bases, it actively seeks intelligence with these other vessels.

Over the last week, some trackers noted unusually large fleets of Chinese fishing vessels moving apparently in unison to within 120 nautical miles of Indian naval drills in the Arabian Sea as tensions rose with Pakistan.

Pentagon reports on China’s military modernisation and analysts note that China’s fishing fleets routinely perform a coordinated militia function that plays an important intelligence gathering role.

“These vessels may double up as listening posts, tracking development rhythms and response patterns, feeding early warning, naval intel to their sponsors,” wrote open source tracker Damien Symon in an X post that highlighted the deployment of 224 Chinese vessels near Indian naval exercises on May 1.

Chinese officials do not usually acknowledge the existence of fishing militia or intelligence work carried out by other nominally-civilian vessels.

Given its deep and broad strategic relationship with Pakistan, Beijing can also be expected to fully exploit its network of envoys and military teams there for key nuggets.

“The presence of Chinese military advisers and other personnel in Pakistan is well-known given how Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence has been importing some of its most advanced military hardware from China, so we can be certain the PLA would be able to access relevant data,” said James Char, a Chinese security scholar at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Reporting by Greg Torode; additional reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing, Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad and Krishna Das in New Delhi; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

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Rohingya refugees sit on wooden benches of a navy vessel on their way to the Bhasan Char island in Noakhali district, Bangladesh, December 29, 2020. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) – The Biden administration has formally determined that violence committed against the Rohingya minority by Myanmar’s military amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity, U.S. officials told Reuters, a move that advocates say should bolster efforts to hold the junta that now runs Myanmar accountable.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will announce the decision on Monday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, U.S. officials said, which currently features an exhibit on the plight of the Rohingya. It comes nearly 14 months after he took office and pledged to conduct a new review of the violence.

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Myanmar’s armed forces launched a military operation in 2017 that forced at least 730,000 of the mainly Muslim Rohingya from their homes and into neighboring Bangladesh, where they recounted killings, mass rape and arson. In 2021, Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup.

U.S. officials and an outside law firm gathered evidence in an effort to acknowledge quickly the seriousness of the atrocities, but then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declined to make a determination. (Read the Reuters special report from March 2021: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BH1B5 , opens new tab

Blinken ordered his own “legal and factual analysis,” the U.S. officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The analysis concluded the Myanmar army is committing genocide and Washington believes the formal determination will increase international pressure to hold the junta accountable.

“It’s going to make it harder for them to commit further abuses,” said one senior State Department official.

Officials in Myanmar’s embassy in Washington and a junta spokesperson did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment on Sunday.

Myanmar’s military has denied committing genocide against the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship in Myanmar, and said it was conducting an operation against terrorists in 2017. (Read Reuters’ 2018 series on the expulsion of the Rohingya https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/myanmar-rohingya/ , opens new tab

A U.N. fact-finding mission concluded in 2018 that the military’s campaign included “genocidal acts,” but Washington referred at the time to the atrocities as “ethnic cleansing,” a term that has no legal definition under international criminal law.

“It’s really signaling to the world and especially to victims and survivors within the Rohingya community and more broadly that the United States recognizes the gravity of what’s happening,” a second senior State Department official said of Blinken’s announcement on Monday.

A genocide determination does not automatically unleash punitive U.S. action.

Since the Cold War, the State Department has formally used the term six times to describe massacres in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and Darfur, the Islamic State’s attacks on Yazidis and other minorities, and most recently last year, over China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslims. China denies the genocide claims.

Blinken will also announce $1 million of additional funding for the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), a United Nations body based in Geneva that is gathering evidence for potential future prosecutions.

“It’s going to enhance our position as we try to build international support to try to prevent further atrocities and hold those accountable,” the first U.S. official said.

U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who led a congressional delegation to Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2017, welcomed the move.

“While this determination is long overdue, it is nevertheless a powerful and critically important step in holding this brutal regime to account,” Merkley said in a statement.

FOCUS ON MILITARY

Days after U.S. President Joe Biden took office, Myanmar generals led by Commander in Chief Min Aung Hlaing seized power on Feb. 1, 2021, after complaining of fraud in a November 2020 general election won by democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi’s party. Election monitoring groups found no evidence of mass fraud.

The armed forces crushed an uprising against their coup, killing more than 1,600 people and detaining nearly 10,000, including civilian leaders such as Suu Kyi, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a campaign group, and setting off an insurgency.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the figures from the AAPP. The junta has said the group’s figures are exaggerated and that members of the security forces have also been killed in clashes with those opposing the coup. The junta has not provided its own figures. read more

In response to the coup, the United States and Western allies sanctioned the junta and its business interests, but have been unable to convince the generals to restore civilian rule after they received military and diplomatic support from Russia and China.

Blinken’s recognition of genocide and crimes against humanity refers mainly to events in 2017, before last year’s coup. The step comes after two State Department examinations – one initiated in 2018 and the other in 2020 – failed to produce a determination.

Some former U.S. officials told Reuters those were missed opportunities to send a firm message to the Myanmar generals who later seized power.

Activists believe a clear statement by the United States that genocide was committed could bolster efforts to hold the generals accountable, such as a case in the International Court of Justice where The Gambia has accused Myanmar of genocide, citing Myanmar’s atrocities against the Rohingya in Rakhine state.

Myanmar has rejected the charge of genocide and urged the court’s judges to drop the case. The junta says The Gambia is acting as a proxy for others and had no legal standing to file a case. read more

The International Criminal Court (ICC), a separate court at The Hague, is also investigating the deportation of Rohingya from Myanmar, and the IIMM in Geneva is gathering evidence that could be used in future trials.

Myanmar opposes the investigations and has refused to cooperate, asserting the ICC does not have jurisdiction and that its decision to launch a probe was swayed by “charged narratives of harrowing personal tragedies which have nothing to do with the legal arguments in question.”

John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said Myanmar’s military has faced “few real consequences for its atrocities, whether against Rohingya or other ethnic minority groups in Myanmar.”

As well as imposing more economic sanctions on the junta, the United States should press for a U.N. Security Council resolution that would refer all the military’s alleged crimes to the International Criminal Court, Sifton said. If Russia and China veto a resolution, as is likely, Washington should lead action in the U.N. General Assembly, he said.

“Condemnations of Myanmar should be coupled with concrete actions,” he said.

Before Blinken made the decision this month, officials debated whether blaming Myanmar’s government – rather than specifically its military – for the atrocities could complicate U.S. support for the country’s deposed democratic forces, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The State Department opted to pin the blame on the military, said the second senior department official.

“It’s not clear to what degree the civilian leadership had control over actions that were happening in Rakhine State and so that’s where the determination ends at this point,” said that official, who did not comment on the internal deliberation.

Suu Kyi, forced to share power with the generals, traveled to the International Court of Justice in 2019 to reject the genocide charges brought by The Gambia.

She said the country would itself prosecute any soldiers found to have committed abuses, but maintained the alleged violations did not rise to the level of genocide, for which the specific intent to destroy a group has to be proven.

When they seized power, the generals put Suu Kyi on trial in nearly a dozen cases that could see her sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. She remains in detention. read more

Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis; Editing by Mary Milliken, Daniel Wallis and Himani Sarkar

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