Gaza hostage talks ‘closest’ to deal since start of war: Qatar

Family members, friends and supporters of hostages held in the Gaza Strip since the October 7 attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel, hold images of those taken during a protest calling for their release outside the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem (AFP)
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Updated 21 November 2023
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Gaza hostage talks ‘closest’ to deal since start of war: Qatar

  • Qatar has helped broker talks aiming to free some of the 240 hostages in return for a temporary ceasefire
  • Israel has launched a relentless retaliatory bombing campaign and ground offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza, killing more than 13,300 people

DOHA: Negotiations to free hostages seized in Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel are at their “closest point” to a deal and have reached the “final stage,” mediator Qatar said Tuesday.
“We are at the closest point we ever had been in reaching an agreement,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said, adding negotiations have reached a “critical and final stage.”
Qatar has helped broker talks aiming to free some of the 240 hostages in return for a temporary cease-fire, a mediation effort that has so far led to the release of four hostages.
“We are very optimistic, very hopeful,” Al-Ansari told a briefing.
“But we are also very keen for this mediation to succeed in reaching a humanitarian truce,” he said.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the October 7 attacks, which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
Israel has launched a relentless retaliatory bombing campaign and ground offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza, killing more than 13,300 people, two-thirds of them women or children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The United States said Saturday it was still working to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas after the Washington Post reported there was a tentative agreement to free women and children hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting.
Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said all parties would halt combat operations for at least five days while some hostages were to be released in batches.
The White House quickly responded on Saturday evening with a message on X, formerly Twitter, to deny any major breakthrough.
“We have seen a lot of the leaks or the statements here and there but we would prefer to keep our statements until we have a final decision on the agreement,” Al-Ansari said.

Here is what we know:

Early Tuesday, Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a brief statement posted online: “We are close to reaching a deal on a truce.” Hamas and Islamic Jihad sources said details of the agreement would be announced officially by Qatar and other mediators. “We are at the closest point we ever had been in reaching an agreement,” Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said later Tuesday, adding negotiations were at a “critical and final stage.”

Two sources close to the tentative deal have said that between 50 and 100 civilian hostages would be released, but no military personnel.

In exchange, Israel would release from its prisons 300 Palestinians, among them women and children.

The transfer would span several days, with 10 hostages and 30 Palestinians prisoners released each day.

But the same sources said Israel had insisted that captive soldiers should also be released if they are related to a civilian abductee freed by the militants — despite Hamas objections.

“Qatar and Egypt are currently working with the US administration to resolve that issue,” the sources said, adding that only then would a date for a truce be announced.

According to the same sources, the deal includes a “complete cease-fire” on the ground for five days, with Israel allowed to fly sorties over northern Gaza for 18 hours a day.

The deal also provides for between 100 and 300 trucks of food and medical aid, as well as fuel, to enter Gaza, the sources said.


Gaza’s Islamic Jihad says Israeli hostage tried to take own life

Updated 59 min ago
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Gaza’s Islamic Jihad says Israeli hostage tried to take own life

  • One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying

DUBAI: An Israeli hostage held by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad militant group has tried to take his own life, the spokesperson for the movement’s armed wing said in a video posted on Telegram on Thursday.
One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying, the Al Quds Brigades spokesperson added, without going into any more detail on the hostage’s identity or current condition.
Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Militants led by Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement killed 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage in an attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies. Hamas ally Islamic Jihad also took part in the assault.
The military campaign that Israel launched in response has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to health officials in the coastal enclave.
Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Hamza said the hostage had tried to take his own life three days ago due to his psychological state, without going into more details.
Abu Hamza accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of setting new conditions that had led to “the failure and delay” of negotiations for the hostage’s release.
The man had been scheduled to be released with other hostages under the conditions of the first stage of an exchange deal with Israel, Abu Hamza said. He did not specify when the man had been scheduled to be released or under which deal.
Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the United States, have so far failed to conclude a ceasefire in Gaza, under a possible deal that would also see the release of Israeli hostages in return for the freedom of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Islamic Jihad’s armed wing had issued a decision to tighten the security and safety measures for the hostages, Abu Hamza added.
In July, Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said some Israeli hostages had tried to kill themselves after it started treating them in what it said was the same way that Israel treated Palestinian prisoners.
“We will keep treating Israeli hostages the same way Israel treats our prisoners,” Abu Hamza said at that time. Israel has dismissed accusations that it mistreats Palestinian prisoners.


Israeli airstrikes kill at least 16 in southern Gaza

Updated 02 January 2025
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Israeli airstrikes kill at least 16 in southern Gaza

At least 16 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, according to medics.

One strike targeted the Hamas-run interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis, killing six people. Another airstrike hit a tent encampment in Al-Mawasi, a designated humanitarian zone for displaced civilians, killing at least 10 people, including women and children, and injuring 15 others.

Among the dead in the Al-Mawasi strike were Mahmoud Salah, Gaza's police chief, and his aide Hussam Shahwan, the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry. The ministry condemned the attack, accusing Israel of seeking to deepen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The Israeli military described the strike in Al-Mawasi as intelligence-based, targeting Shahwan but did not acknowledge Salah's death.

The Gaza health ministry reports over 45,500 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, with most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced and large portions of the territory in ruins. The conflict, now in its 15th month, began after Hamas’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages being taken to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.


27 migrants die off Tunisia, 83 rescued, in shipwrecks: civil defence

Updated 1 min 9 sec ago
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27 migrants die off Tunisia, 83 rescued, in shipwrecks: civil defence

TUNIS:  Twenty-seven migrants, including women and children, died after two boats capsized off central Tunisia, with 83 people rescued, a civil defense official told AFP on Thursday.
The rescued and dead passengers, who were found off the Kerkennah Islands off central Tunisia, were aiming to reach Europe and were all from sub-Saharan African countries, said Zied Sdiri, head of civil defense in the city of Sfax.
Searches were still underway for other possible missing passengers, according to the Tunisian National Guard, which oversees the coast guard.
Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe with Italy, whose island of Lampedusa is only 150 kilometers (90 miles) from Tunisia, often their first port of call.
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing, which has seen a spate of recent shipwrecks, with the dangers exacerbated by bad weather.
On December 18, at least 20 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa died in a shipwreck off the city of Sfax, with five others missing.
Earlier on December 12, the coast guard rescued 27 African migrants near Jebeniana, north of Sfax, but 15 were reported dead or missing.
Since the beginning of the year, the Tunisian human rights group FTDES has counted “between 600 and 700” migrants killed or missing in shipwrecks off Tunisia. More than 1,300 migrants died or disappeared in 2023.
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Syria forces launch security sweep in Homs city: state media

Updated 02 January 2025
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Syria forces launch security sweep in Homs city: state media

  • Syrian security forces are conducting a security sweep in the city of Homs, state media reported on Thursday

DAMASCUS: Syrian security forces are conducting a security sweep in the city of Homs, state media reported on Thursday, with a monitor saying targets include protest organizers from the Alawite minority of the former president.
“The Ministry of Interior, in cooperation with the Military Operations Department, begins a wide-scale combing operation in the neighborhoods of Homs city,” state news agency SANA said quoting a security official.
The statement said the targets were “war criminals and those involved in crimes who refused to hand over their weapons and go to the settlement centers” but also “fugitives from justice, in addition to hidden ammunition and weapons.”
Since Islamist-led rebels seized power in a lightning offensive last month, the transitional government has been registering former conscripts and soldiers and asking them to hand over their weapons.
“The Ministry of Interior calls on the residents of the neighborhoods of Wadi Al-Dhahab, Akrama not to go out to the streets, remain home, and fully cooperate with our forces,” the statement said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, told AFP the two districts are majority-Alawite — the community from which ousted President Bashar Assad hails.
“The ongoing campaign aims to search for former Shabiha and those who organized or participated in the Alawite demonstrations last week, which the administration considered as incitement against” its authority, he said.
Shabiha were notorious pro-government militias tasked with helping to crush dissent under Assad.
On December 25, thousands protested in several areas of Syria after a video circulated showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the country’s north.
AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or the date of the incident but the interior ministry said the video was “old and dates to the time of the liberation” of Aleppo in December.
Since seizing power, Syria’s new leadership has repeatedly tried to reassure minorities that they will not be harmed.
Alawites fear backlash against their community both as a religious minority and because of its long association with the Assad family.
Last week, security forces launched an operation against pro-Assad fighters in the western province of Tartus, in the Alawite heartland, state media had said, a day after 14 security personnel of the new authorities and three gunmen were killed in clashes there.


Palestinian Authority suspends broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily

Updated 02 January 2025
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Palestinian Authority suspends broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily

  • The authority accuses the broadcaster of sowing division in the Middle East and Palestine
  • The authority says Al-Jazeera was airing 'inciting material' from Jenin camp in the West Bank

CAIRO: The Palestinian Authority suspended the broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily over “inciting material,” Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported on Wednesday.
A ministerial committee that includes the culture, interior and communications ministries decided to suspend the broadcaster’s operations over what they described as broadcasting “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the country.
The decision isn’t expected to be implemented in Hamas-run Gaza where the Palestinian Authority does not exercise power.
Al-Jazeera TV last week came under criticism by the Palestinian Authority over its coverage of the weeks-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank.
Fatah, the faction which controls the Palestinian Authority, said the broadcaster was sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular.” It encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.
Israeli forces in September issued Al-Jazeera with a military order to shut down operations, after they raided the outlet’s bureau in the West Bank city of Ramallah.