A Qatari mission has begun searching for the remains of US hostages killed by Daesh in Syria a decade ago, two sources briefed on the mission said, reviving a longstanding effort to recover their bodies.
Daesh, which controlled swathes of Syria and Iraq at the peak of its power from 2014-2017, beheaded numerous people in captivity, including Western hostages, and released videos of the killings.
Qatar’s international search and rescue group began the search on Wednesday, accompanied by several Americans, the sources said. The group, deployed by Doha to earthquake zones in Morocco and Turkiye in recent years, had so far found the remains of three bodies, the sources said.
One of the sources — a Syrian security source — said the remains had yet to be identified. The second source said it was unclear how long the mission would last.
The US State Department had no immediate comment.
The Qatari mission gets under way as US President Donald Trump prepares to visit Doha and other Gulf Arab allies next week and as Syria’s ruling Islamists, close allies of Qatar, seek relief from US sanctions.
The Syrian source said the mission’s initial focus was on looking for the body of aid worker Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by Daesh in 2014 in Dabiq in northern Syria. The second source said Kassig’s remains were among those they hoped to find.
US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were among other Western hostages killed by Daesh. Their deaths were confirmed in 2014.
US aid worker Kayla Mueller was also killed in Daesh captivity. She was raped repeatedly by Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi before her death, US officials have said. Her death was confirmed in 2015.
“We’re grateful for anyone taking on this task and risking their lives in some circumstances to try and find the bodies of Jim and the other hostages,” said Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother. “We thank all those involved in this effort.”
The families of the other hostages, contacted via the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The extremists were eventually driven out of their self-declared caliphate by a US-led coalition and other forces.

APRIL VISIT
Plans for the Qatari mission were discussed during a visit to Washington in April by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and the Minister of State for the foreign ministry, Mohammed Al Khulaifi — a trip also designed to prepare for Trump’s visit to Qatar, one of the sources said.
Another person familiar with the issue said there had been a longstanding commitment by successive US administrations to find the remains of the murdered Americans, and that there had been multiple previous “efforts with US government officials on the ground in Syria to search very specific areas.”
The person did not elaborate. But the US has had hundreds of troops deployed in northeastern Syria that have continued pursuing the remnants of Daesh.
The person said the remains of Kassig, Sotloff and Foley were most likely in the same general area, and that Dabiq had been one of Daesh’s “centerpieces” — a reference to its propaganda value as a place named in an Islamic prophecy.
Mueller’s case differed in that she was in Baghdadi’s custody, the person said.
Two Daesh members, both former British citizens who were part of a cell that beheaded American hostages, are serving life prison sentences in the United States.
Syrian interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who seized power from Bashar Assad in December, battled Daesh when he was the commander of another jihadist faction — the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front — during the Syrian war.
Sharaa severed ties to Al-Qaeda in 2016.

NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s top anti-racism body has called for immediate humanitarian access to Gaza in a bid to avoid “catastrophic consequences” for its civilian population.

The statement by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — comprised of independent experts — came hours after the World Central Kitchen charity said it was forced to end operations in Gaza due to a lack of food.

It also follows a commitment by Israel to “conquer” almost all of the enclave, as well as disputes involving Israel, the UN and US over the appropriate way to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians there.

The CERD committee is convening in Geneva for its latest session, ending today.

Gaza’s civilian population, “especially vulnerable groups such as children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities,” are “at imminent risk of famine, disease and death,” the committee said.

The warning follows an earlier appeal by the World Food Programme, the UN’s food agency, which said that almost all food aid operations in Gaza had collapsed.

Late last month, the agency announced that the entirety of its food reserves in the enclave had been depleted.

Since March, Israel has blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza in a bid to build pressure on Hamas, which still holds Israeli hostages.

Tom Fletcher, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, said last week: “Two months ago, the Israeli authorities took a deliberate decision to block all aid to Gaza and halt our efforts to save survivors of their military offensive.

“They have been bracingly honest that this policy is to pressurize Hamas.”

Expanded military operations by Israel in Gaza over the past two months “have dramatically worsened the humanitarian crisis and severely endangered the civilian population,” Friday’s CERD statement said.

The committee called on Israel to “lift all barriers to humanitarian access, allow the immediate and unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid, and cease all actions obstructing the provision of essential services to the civilian population in Gaza.”

The statement also highlighted worsening conditions across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including in East Jerusalem, where Israel closed six UNRWA schools this week.

Philippe Lazzarini, the Palestinian refugee agency’s chief, reacted with fury over the move, describing it as an “assault on children.”

The CERD statement called on all UN states to “cooperate to bring an end to the violations that are taking place and to prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, including by ceasing any military assistance.”