As international condemnation mounts over the Israeli military’s arrest late last month of the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had new evidence that militant groups had used the hospital as a command center.

The military released footage of what it said was an interrogation of one of the more than 240 militants it had arrested in raiding the hospital, saying it backed up Israel’s allegations that Hamas and other armed groups deliberately embed themselves in hospitals in violation of international law.

The New York Times was not able to independently verify the claims made in the video, or to determine the circumstances under which the detainee made the admission. Israel has detained many Gazans in Sde Teiman, an army base in southern Israel, where many have been held in demeaning conditions and in which former detainees described beatings and other abuse. The Israeli military has denied accusations of systematic abuse there.

The short clip the military released shows a young man who identifies himself as Anas Muhammad Faiz al-Sharif, 21, explaining that he had been a cleaning supervisor at Kamal Adwan Hospital, as well as a member of Hamas’s military wing since 2021. In the video, he says that operatives from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups operated out of the hospital, using it for weapons transfers and distribution, patrols and as an observation post, because they considered it a safe haven that could not be directly targeted by the Israeli military.

Hospitals are protected under international law, even if they provide medical care for combatants, but if they are used for other acts that are “harmful to the enemy,” that can make them legitimate targets for military action. Still, the military must weigh the expected military advantage of any action against the expected harm to civilians, and civilian harm must not be disproportional.

Israel has raided Kamal Adwan before and attacked areas in the vicinity of the hospital. In October, the military detained or expelled most of the hospital’s staff members during a raid that lasted for days. Before his arrest in December, the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said that the hospital had been attacked many times in recent months.

Hamas did not respond to requests for comment on the Israeli claims about its operations.

Doctors and medical workers around the world, including in Israel, have condemned the raid on Kamal Adwan, and particularly the arrest of Dr. Abu Safiya. The hospital had been a main provider of medical care for the thousands of people who have remained in northern Gaza through an intensive Israeli military campaign over the last three months to quell what Israel says has been a Hamas resurgence there.

Dr. Abu Safiya was vocal in his protests of Israeli military activity throughout the war and frequently shined a light on the suffering in northern Gaza, in recent months especially.

In the days after the raid, the Israeli military confirmed the arrest of Dr. Abu Safiya, saying he was being questioned as a suspect and accusing him of being a member of Hamas. Because the group has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007, all kinds of public services, including health care, are to varying degrees entwined with Hamas.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel, an Israeli nonprofit group, said on Sunday that the Israeli military had refused the group’s efforts to send a lawyer to see Dr. Abu Safiya to evaluate his state and the conditions of his detention. “Despite our urgent requests to send an attorney, the military says he’s barred from lawyer visits” until Jan. 10, the group said.

The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Saturday that Kamal Adwan Hospital remains “completely out of function” and that the organization has “received no updates on the safety and well-being of its director” since his detention. “We continue to urge Israel to release him,” Dr. Tedros said, adding that “attacks on hospitals and health professionals must end.”

On Monday, medical workers calling for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya and an end to attacks on hospitals and health workers in Gaza protested in cities around the United States and the world, including San Francisco, New York, Boston, Quebec and London. The rallies were organized by Doctors Against Genocide, a global coalition of health care workers based in Michigan and founded in 2023, which has demanded that Dr. Abu Safiya and his colleagues be released.

But the Israeli military has long insisted that Hamas and other militant groups have deliberately embedded themselves among civilians in violation of international law, and there is no indication that its campaign in Gaza will let up, despite international outrage. Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the military’s chief of staff, in remarks to soldiers in northern Gaza on Monday, said of Hamas: “They understand that this is becoming unbearable. And I’m telling you — we won’t stop.”

The man widely called the true winner of Venezuela’s tainted presidential election said on Tuesday that his son-in-law had been kidnapped by hooded men in Caracas, the capital.

Edmundo González said that his son-in-law, Rafael Tudares, was walking Mr. González’s grandchildren to school when he was “intercepted” by hooded men dressed in black, and taken away in a gold van.

“At this time he is missing,” he wrote on X.

The reported kidnapping comes one day after Mr. González met at the White House with President Biden, whose administration recognizes Mr. González as president-elect, in an effort to put international pressure on President Nicolás Maduro, the longtime authoritarian leader who claims he won Venezuela’s July election.

On Monday the Maduro government, in a statement, called the meeting “a flagrant violation of international law and a crude attempt to perpetuate imperialist interference in Latin America.”

Mr. González, 75, was forced to flee the country shortly after millions of Venezuelans voted for him, and he is now living in exile in Spain. He has promised repeatedly to return to his country to be sworn in on Friday, when Maduro, in power since 2013, is scheduled to be inaugurated for another six-year term.

The Maduro government has imposed a $100,000 bounty on Mr. González and he likely faces arrest if he returns.

The Venezuelan government has unleashed a wave of repression against anyone who challenges its declared victory, arresting about 2,000 people and charging most with terrorism. Human rights groups have described it as Venezuela’s most brutal campaign of repression in recent decades.

The government has released hundreds of those prisoners in recent months, in what many analysts saw as a signal to President-elect Donald J. Trump that it is willing to ease up on human rights in exchange for favorable treatment.

The U.S. State Department called the disappearance an attempt to “intimidate Venezuela’s democratic opposition.”

A spokesman for the Maduro government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Diosdado Cabello, a top official in Mr. Maduro’s government and one of his most powerful allies, did not refer directly to the episode in public remarks on Tuesday, but said, “today we have just dismantled a very dangerous group” of “foreign mercenaries from the United States and Colombia.’’

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages being held by Hamas are not released by Inauguration Day, repeating the threat four times during a wide-ranging news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” he told reporters. “And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say any more, but that’s what it is.”

Mr. Trump did not elaborate about what actions he might take if the hostages were not released by the time he enters office. And he declined to provide details about what he or his advisers are doing in the days leading up to the inauguration. Officials say about 100 hostages, including some Americans, who were seized on Oct. 7, 2023, remain captive in Gaza, though they believe many of them may have died in captivity.

“They should have never taken them,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “There should have never been the attack of Oct. 7. People forget that. But there was, and many people were killed.”

President Biden and his top national security aides have been working for months to try to negotiate the release of the remaining hostages. A deal has seemed imminent several times, only to fall apart after what Biden administration officials have said were rejections by Hamas negotiators. Israeli officials have also objected to some parts of proposed deals.

During his remarks, Mr. Trump suggested that his threats against Hamas would cause the group to relent. But experts on the Middle East struggled to understand the meaning of Mr. Trump’s threats.

“I don’t have clue, nor does he,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a U.S. ambassador to Israel during the George W. Bush administration.

Over the past 15 months, Israel’s military has nearly destroyed Hamas as an organized fighting force. It is unclear what more any escalated attacks by the incoming Trump administration, or Israel, could accomplish.

“I see no scenario where U.S. forces would be engaged; in any event, we don’t have a better idea than the Israelis what would force Hamas’s hand,” Mr. Kurtzer added. “Bluster is the worst form of policy.”

Aaron David Miller, a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator, said it was unclear what Mr. Trump could do if the hostages were not released by his deadline. And he questioned whether Mr. Trump could persuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to take a deal.

“Trump will never be able to inflict more pain on Hamas and Palestinians than Israel already has,” Mr. Miller said. “He does have leverage over Netanyahu. But would he really use it to press Israel to agree to terms of a deal that might appear to benefit Hamas?”

At one point on Tuesday, the president-elect invited Steve Witkoff, whom he intends to appoint as his Middle East envoy, to speak to reporters. Mr. Witkoff said negotiators were “making a lot of progress,” but he did not give specifics.

“And I don’t want to say too much, because I think they’re doing a really good job,” Mr. Witkoff said. “I’m really hopeful that by the inaugural we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president.”

Mr. Witkoff seemed to praise the Biden administration’s efforts, saying that “I actually believe that we’re working in tandem in a really good way.” But he also singled out Mr. Trump, saying it was the president-elect’s “stature” and “the red lines he’s put out there that’s driving this negotiation.”

Mr. Witkoff added that he was “leaving tomorrow” to go back to Doha, where delegations from Israel and Hamas have been negotiating through Qatari mediators. It was unclear what role, if any, Mr. Witkoff has been playing in those talks.

The reality of a change of administrations in the United States has complicated the last-ditch efforts by Mr. Biden and his advisers to get a deal to release the hostages. Families of those still being held have urged Biden and Trump officials to work together toward that goal.

Biden national security officials have said they are keeping their Trump counterparts fully informed about the negotiations. And members of both teams appear aligned behind the same goal: using the deadline of the inauguration to pressure Hamas to release everyone it is holding.

But if a release happens, the two administrations are likely to be starkly divided over who deserves praise.

The comments by Mr. Trump and Mr. Witkoff on Tuesday appeared to be devised at least in part so the president-elect can claim credit for a release if it happens just before he takes office. Mr. Witkoff told reporters that he thought Hamas was listening to Mr. Trump.

“He exhorts us to speak emphatically, and emphatically means you better get it — you better do this,” he said, adding that Hamas is not waiting for Mr. Trump to take office. “I think they heard him loud and clear. Better get done by the inaugural.”

Aides to Mr. Biden said that Mr. Witkoff and Brett McGurk, the chief negotiator for the Biden administration, had been talking regularly and that the discussions had been “constructive” and “appropriate.” Mr. McGurk has been the lead negotiator working to bring the two sides to an agreement.

That contact illustrates that “the Biden and Trump teams are far more coordinated than were, say, the Obama and Trump teams in late 2016 and early 2017,” said Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

But Biden officials have argued that progress toward a deal is the result of months of painstaking discussions and Israel’s intense bombardment of Hamas.

Israel’s bombing of Gaza — which has come under intense scrutiny from many parts of the world because it has killed tens of thousands of people — severely damaged Hamas and left most of its leaders dead, including Yahya Sinwar and the masterminds of Oct. 7 attacks. Israel’s strikes against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon have further isolated Hamas, Biden officials say.

They also note that the deal under consideration now with Hamas is based on an agreement that Mr. Biden offered to Israel and Hamas in May and that was later endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.

Mr. Miller said it would be unusual for a member of an incoming administration, like Mr. Witkoff, to be a direct part of sensitive negotiations with foreign countries.

“It’s fascinating that he said today ‘we’re making progress,’” Mr. Miller said, referring to Mr. Witkoff. “He’s inserted himself — as has Trump — in a negotiating process owned by the Biden administration and in which they have no official role. And of course they’re setting the stage to claim credit for the deal when it happens.”

Ireland has formally joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, according to a statement on Tuesday from the International Court of Justice.

The filing, made on Monday, comes months after Ireland announced plans to intervene in the case before the United Nations’ highest judicial body.

“Ireland, invoking Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, filed in the Registry of the Court a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” the court said in a statement on Tuesday.

South Africa brought its case to the I.C.J. in December 2023, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Israel has strongly rejected the allegation, describing South Africa’s filing as a “despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the Court.”

In an initial ruling in January 2024, the court ordered Israel to restrain its attacks in Gaza, and in May it ordered the country to immediately halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza.

The United Nations allows countries to “intervene” in proceedings if they are parties to the United Nations’ 1948 Genocide Convention.

The Irish government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but the filing was long anticipated. Last month, the government approved a plan to file its argument in the case, with Micheál Martin, the deputy prime minister and minister for foreign affairs, saying that it would be filed in The Hague, where the court is based, within weeks.

“There has been a collective punishment of the Palestinian people through the intent and impact of military actions of Israel in Gaza, leaving 44,000 dead and millions of civilians displaced,” Mr. Martin said in December, adding that Ireland would ask the court to broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a state.

“We are concerned that a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide leads to a culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimized,” he added.

Experts say the court is not expected to rule on the genocide charge for years.

The decision to intervene in the case reflects Ireland’s longstanding support for Palestinian civilians, rooted in part in a shared history of British colonialism and in Ireland’s own experience with a seemingly intractable sectarian conflict — The Troubles, which came to a close with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Last month, Israel announced it was closing its embassy in Dublin, citing what it said were “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government.” Israeli officials said the action did not mean that Israel was severing diplomatic relations with Ireland.

Crossings into the United States from Mexico have dropped sharply since last year. But countries south of the U.S. border are waiting nervously to see if President-elect Donald J. Trump orders mass deportations.

The possibility that millions of undocumented immigrants could be expelled — what would be the largest deportation program in American history — has sent shock waves through Latin America and sowed confusion among migrants and asylum seekers.

“We see dark times coming for the migrant community,” said Irineo Mujica, the Mexico director of People Without Borders, a transnational advocacy group. “Anyone who falls prey to the Trump administration is now going to be devoured, chewed up and spat out.”

What is the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border?

Mr. Trump has said that Mexico is allowing an “invasion” of migrants into the United States. But the current situation on the ground tells a different story.

Unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have been declining since June, when President Biden issued an executive order to essentially block undocumented migrants from receiving asylum at the border.

That month, U.S. Border Patrol officials recorded 130,415 apprehensions of migrants — a sharp drop from the more than 170,710 recorded the previous month. The numbers in November were even lower: U.S. officials recorded 94,190 people.

That is a stark shift from a year ago. Illegal crossings for November 2023 rose above 242,300, a record at the time.

How have the U.S. and Mexico reduced crossings?

Critics who argue that asylum is legal and a basic human right say Mr. Biden’s move was a short-term fix for a complex issue.

As part of Mr. Biden’s order, restrictions are to be lifted when the number of people trying to cross illegally each day drops below 1,500 for one week. That has not happened. But it has sharply brought down border crossings and allowed officials to deport those who cannot prove they would be endangered if they returned to their countries.

Mexico has also clamped down on people heading to the U.S. border.

It has deployed National Guard troops to immigration checkpoints from north to south. More recently, the authorities have bused migrants farther south into Mexico — in what officials and scholars call a migratory merry-go-round. They have prevented them from hopping onto trains heading north and have broken up caravans, which no longer reach the U.S. border.

In 2023, Mexico paused the issuance of humanitarian cards that allowed asylum seekers to study, work and get access to basic services in Mexico. Under the law, they are supposed to stay in the state where they apply for asylum. But many use the cards to move north without being detained, officials say.

As a result of the stoppage, between Oct. 1 and Dec. 26, 2024, Mexican security forces said, they detained over 475,000 migrants, nearly 68 percent more than the number apprehended during the same period in 2023, government data show.

What is the status of migrants waiting in Mexico?

As Mexico’s strategy has shifted, many migrants have become stranded.

“By not giving them cards, they could no longer access public services or enter the legal market,” said Andrés Ramírez Silva, who until September was the head of the country’s Commission for Refugee Assistance.

The situation is unsustainable, advocacy groups warn. More migrants have become easy prey for organized crime groups, which extort them.

“Many people keep arriving” in Mexico, said Mauro Pérez Bravo, the former president of the citizen council of the National Migration Institute. But they live in “vulnerable conditions,” he added, working low-paid jobs or sleeping in shelters, junkyards, construction sites or on the street.

How is Mexico preparing for mass deportations?

Mexican border states have been working in coordination with the federal government to set up shelters to provide food and health services.

They have been making transportation arrangements for Mexicans who wish to return to their home states. In Tijuana, a border town south of San Diego, city officials have been coordinating with churches, bus companies and humanitarian groups to prepare for arrivals, said José Luis Pérez Canchola, director of the city’s migration services office.

He worries that mass deportations from the United States could further strain Tijuana’s resources for migrants, noting that many are likely to be unaccompanied minors or in need of medical attention.

Making sure people do not stay long in Mexican border cities like Ciudad Juárez is a major priority, said María Eugenia Campos, governor of Chihuahua state, which shares an extensive border with Texas and New Mexico.

“The state of Chihuahua cannot become a sanctuary state” for migrants and deportees, she said.

Until this month, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, had said the country would not accept foreign deportees. On Friday, she signaled otherwise.

“We are going to ask the United States that, as far as possible, the migrants who are not from Mexico can be sent to their countries of origin — and if not, we can collaborate through different mechanisms,” she told reporters, adding that her government had “a plan,” without offering details.

Have the factors driving migration changed?

Not really.

About 392,000 Mexicans were displaced as a result of conflict and violence in 2023, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, which compiles data from federal governments. That was the highest figure since record-keeping began in 2009.

The situation is somewhat similar in Central America. In some countries, criminal gangs and drug cartels have led many to flee.

Honduras had more than 240,000 people internally displaced because of insecurity by the end of 2022, according to a recent report by the International Organization for Migration.

In Guatemala, factors that drive people out — inequality, poverty, climate change, economic instability and violence — have not improved much despite the election of a new president, Bernardo Arévalo, an anticorruption crusader, said Aracely Martínez, a migration researcher at the Universidad del Valle in Guatemala City.

“We have a new government whose campaign proposed fundamental changes, but we still do not see direct results,” she said.

Still, the number of Guatemalans recorded at the U.S.-Mexico border decreased to nearly 8,000 in November from more than 20,000 in January 2024, when Mr. Arévalo took office, U.S. Border Patrol data indicate.

What is the situation elsewhere?

Venezuela and Cuba, which have faced harsh U.S. sanctions, are likely to refuse large numbers of deportation flights.

Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador signed asylum agreements with the first Trump administration to require people, mostly asylum seekers from Latin America, to first take refuge in those three countries before applying in the United States, though the policy was not put in place in Honduras and El Salvador.

The most concrete pushback against Mr. Trump’s vow of mass deportations has come from President Xiomara Castro of Honduras, who said this month that bases housing U.S. military forces “would lose all reason to exist” in her country if he carried out his promise.

In Guatemala, the government denied as “fake” reports that officials were open to receiving deported foreigners.

Panama in December reported 4,849 people migrating through the perilous Darién Gap — the stretch of jungle that has become a popular migrant route — the fewest numbers in more than two years. Some experts see that as a likely sign of migrants delaying their plans until after Mr. Trump’s election, as well as Panama’s efforts to limit undocumented migration taking effect.

“We can’t claim victory, but for the moment we are curbing — the figures say so — the flow of migrants,” Javier Martínez Acha, Panama’s foreign affairs minister, said in an interview.

In El Salvador, Mr. Trump may find an ally in President Nayib Bukele, who is close to members of the president-elect’s inner circle.

The Bukele administration has not spoken publicly about mass deportations. Asked about specific preparations for mass deportations, an operator with one of the call centers El Salvador set up to provide information to Salvadorans in the United States said, “We can’t get ahead of ourselves.”

Jody García contributed reporting from Guatemala City, Gabriel Labrador from San Salvador and Mary Triny Zea from Panama City.

After struggling without heat for six days, a breakaway region in the Eastern European country of Moldova is now short of electricity, too, with the authorities ordering eight hours of power cuts a day to prevent the overloaded electricity system from collapsing.

The energy crisis in Transnistria, a sliver of pro-Russian territory between Moldova and Ukraine, began on Jan. 1 when Moscow stopped supplying natural gas through a pipeline running across Ukraine. It intensified this week as residents tried to keep warm using electric heaters, overloading and often blowing out an antiquated Soviet-era electricity grid. The power outages have in turn interrupted water supplies.

The halt in Russian gas deliveries, prompted by Ukraine’s refusal to renew an expiring gas transit deal, has raised questions about the survival of Transnistria, which declared itself an independent microstate in 1990 and has survived since then thanks to economic and military support from Moscow.

Inhabited largely by Russian speakers, Transnistria on Tuesday celebrated Orthodox Christmas, usually a festive occasion, but one that was made painful this year by the absence of gas for cooking and heat. In a grim Christmas message, the region’s president, Vadim Krasnoselsky, urged people not to give up, telling them “it is very important to hope for the best and believe that everything can be overcome.”

Moldova’s prime minister, Dorin Recean, said Monday that his government had offered to help Transnistria, located mostly on the left or eastern bank of the Dniester River, but had been rebuffed.

Transnistria’s leader, Mr. Krasnoselsky, said in remarks broadcast by local media that he had received no offers of help, accusing Moldova of trying to “strangle” his breakaway territory and force it to give up its claims to statehood, a status that is not recognized by any country.

Indirectly addressing the question of whether Russia, by cutting off gas, has effectively given up on Transnistria, Mr. Krasnoselsky said that “talk of Russia abandoning Transnistria” was being spread by “unfriendly” outsiders to create panic.

Prime Minister Recean, speaking to journalists at an online news conference, said “Moldova’s objective is to reintegrate the country” but said this would be done peacefully and could only happen once Russia withdraws troops “illegally stationed there.”

The escalating energy crisis, however, has raised the possibility that people could start fleeing the enclave, leaving it an empty husk — unless Russia steps in using alternative gas conduits that skirt Ukraine.

“If they cannot survive any more on the left bank without electricity, heating and water, then we will be hosting them here on the right bank,” Mr. Recean said.

Moscow has so far balked at getting gas to Transnistria by using a pipeline under the Black Sea to Turkey, which connects to a gas route through the Balkans to Moldova and the separatist enclave. Doing that would involve extra transit fees for the Russian energy giant Gazprom, which, even before Ukraine shut down the cheaper route, was already losing large amounts of money because it delivered gas largely for free to Transnistria.

Mr. Kranoselsky pleaded with residents on Tuesday to unplug electrical heaters “so that an already difficult situation does not get worse,” noting that there had been 160 emergency power outages the previous day. Local media outlets posted photographs of burned out fuse boxes and reported multiple electrical fires. Military field kitchens have appeared on the streets of Tiraspol, the region’s capital, to feed residents hot food.

Russia sent troops to Transnistria as peacekeepers during a brief war in 1992 between Russian-speaking separatists and Romanian-speaking fighters from Moldova but they are still there more than three decades later.

Unable to resupply its forces since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, Russia has increasingly relied on local supplies and manpower to maintain its military force in Transnistria of around 1,500 soldiers.