Israeli military says 10 Israelis, four Thai nationals, have been released by Hamas

Thai nationals gesture from a bus as they leave the Shamir Hospital in Ramle, Israel, Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023, on their way back to Thailand, after being released from Hamas custody. (AP)
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Updated 30 November 2023
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Israeli military says 10 Israelis, four Thai nationals, have been released by Hamas

  • International pressure has mounted for the cease-fire to continue as long as possible after nearly eight weeks of Israeli bombardment and a ground campaign in Gaza

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said 10 Israelis and four Thai nationals were released late Wednesday from captivity in the Gaza Strip.
The hostages crossed into Egypt and were to be transferred to Israel.
It was the sixth such release under a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Israel is to release 30 Palestinian prisoners later Wednesday.
The cease-fire is set to expire early Thursday. International mediators are trying to extend the deal to facilitate the release of additional hostages held by Hamas.
The militant group captured some 240 people in an Oct. 7 cross-border attack that triggered the war. Some 150 people are believed to remain in captivity.
A new swap of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israel got underway late Wednesday in the final hours of the current Gaza truce as international mediators raced to extend the halt of Israel’s air and ground offensive to allow further exchanges.
The Israeli military said a group of 10 Israeli women and children and four Thai nationals had been handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza and were heading to exit the territory. Earlier, two Russian-Israeli women were freed by Hamas in a separate release. Israel was set to free 30 Palestinian prisoners in return.
Negotiators were working down to the wire to hammer out details for a further extension of the truce beyond its deadline of early Thursday. The talks appear to be growing tougher as most of the women and children held by Hamas are freed, and the militants are expected to seek greater releases in return for freeing men and soldiers.
International pressure has mounted for the cease-fire to continue as long as possible after nearly eight weeks of Israeli bombardment and a ground campaign in Gaza that has killed thousands of Palestinians, uprooted three quarters of the population of 2.3 million and led to a humanitarian crisis. Israel has welcomed the release of dozens of hostages in recent days and says it will maintain the truce if Hamas keeps freeing captives.
Still, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored on Wednesday that Israel will resume its campaign to eliminate Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for 16 years and orchestrated the deadly attack on Israel that triggered the war
“After this phase of returning our abductees is exhausted, will Israel return to fighting? So my answer is an unequivocal yes,” he said. “There is no way we are not going back to fighting until the end.”
He spoke ahead of a visit to the region planned this week by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to press for further extensions of the truce and hostage releases.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops killed two Palestinian boys — an 8-year-old an a 15-year-old — during a raid on the town of Jenin, Palestinian health officials said. Security footage showed a group of boys in the street who start to run, except for one who falls to the ground, bleeding.
The Israeli military said its troops fired on people who threw explosives at them but did not specify it was referring to the boys, who are not seen throwing anything. Separately, the military said its troops killed two Islamic Jihad militants during the raid.
So far, the Israeli onslaught in Gaza seems to have had little effect on Hamas’ rule, evidenced by its ability to conduct complex negotiations, enforce the cease-fire among other armed groups, and orchestrate the release of hostages. Hamas leaders, including Yehya Sinwar, have likely relocated to the south.
With Israeli troops holding much of northern Gaza, a ground invasion south will likely bring an escalating cost in Palestinian lives and destruction.
Most of Gaza’s population is now crammed into the south. The truce has brought them relief from bombardment, but the days of calm have been taken up in a frenzied rush to obtain supplies to feed their families as aid enters in greater, but still insufficient, amounts.
United States, Israel’s main ally, has shown greater reticence over the impact of the war in Gaza. The Biden administration has told Israel that if it launches an offensive in the south, it must operate with far greater precision.
ISRAEL’S HOSTAGE DILEMMA
The plight of the captives and shock from the Oct. 7 attack have galvanized Israeli support for the war. But Netanyahu is under pressure to bring the hostages home and could find it difficult to resume the offensive if there’s a prospect for more releases.
Since the initial truce began on Friday, both sides have been releasing women and children in their exchanges. After Friday’s releases, Gaza militants still hold around 20 women, accordding to Israeli officials. IF the truce continues at the current rate, they would be out in a few days.
After that, keeping the truce going depends on tougher negotiations over the release of around 126 men Israel says are held captive – including several dozen soldiers.
For men — and especially soldiers — Hamas is expected to push for comparable releases of Palestinian men or prominent detainees, a deal Israel may resist.
An Israeli official involved in hostage negotiations said talks on a further extension for release of civilian males and soldiers were still preliminary, and a deal would not be considered until all the women and children are out. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations were ongoing.
With Wednesday’s releases, a total of 73 Israelis, including dual nationals, have been freed during the six-day truce, most of whom appear physically well but shaken. Another 24 hostages — 23 Thais and one Filipino — have also been released. Before the cease-fire, Hamas released four hostages, and the Israeli army rescued one. Two others were found dead in Gaza.
So far, most of the 180 Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons have been teenagers accused of throwing stones and firebombs during confrontations with Israeli forces. Several were women convicted by Israeli military courts of attempting to attack soldiers.
Palestinians have celebrated the release of people they see as having resisted Israel’s decades-long military occupation of lands they want for a future state.
The war began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, in which it killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The militants kidnapped some 240 people back into Gaza, including babies, children, women, soldiers, older adults and Thai farm laborers.
Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion in Gaza have killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The toll is likely much higher, as officials have only sporadically updated the count since Nov. 11 due to the breakdown of services in the north. The ministry says thousands more people are missing and feared dead under the rubble.
Israel says 77 of its soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive. It claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence.
TENSE CALM IN GAZA
For Palestinians in Gaza, the truce’s calm has been overwhelmed by the search for aid and by horror as they see the extent of destruction.
In the north, residents described entire residential blocks leveled to the ground in Gaza City and surrounding areas. The smell of decomposing bodies trapped under collapsed buildings fills the air, said Mohmmed Mattar, a 29-year-old resident of Gaza City who along with other volunteers searches for the dead under rubble or left in the streets.
They have found and buried 46 so far during the truce, he said. Most were unidentified. More bodies remain inside rubble but can’t be reached without heavy equipment, or are left on streets that are unapproachable because of Israeli troops nearby, Mattar said.
In the south, the truce has allowed more aid to be delivered from Egypt, up to 200 trucks a day. But aid officials say it is not enough, given that most now depend on outside aid. Overwhelmed UN-run shelters house more than 1 million displaced people, with many sleeping outside in cold, rainy weather.
At a distribution center in Rafah, large crowds line daily up for newly arrived bags of flour. But supplies run out quickly before many can get their share.
“We’ve been searching for bread for our children,” said one woman in line, Nawal Abu Namous. “Every day, we come here … we spend money on transportation to get here, just to go home with nothing.”
Some markets and shops have reopened, but prices for the few items in stock have skyrocketed. Winter clothes are unavailable. One clothes shop owner in Deir Al-Balah told The Associated Press that he hates opening his doors in the morning, knowing he’ll spend most of the day apologizing to customers for not having winter items.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said some 111,000 people have respiratory infections and 75,000 have diarrhea, more than half of them under 5 years old. “More people could die from disease than bombings.”
“We are fed up,” said Omar Al-Darawi, who works at the overwhelmed Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza. “We want this war to stop.”


UN chief “deeply alarmed” by Israeli strike on Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza

Updated 4 sec ago
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UN chief “deeply alarmed” by Israeli strike on Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza

  • United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “deeply alarmed” at Sunday’s strike by Israeli
GENEVA: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “deeply alarmed” at Sunday’s strike by Israeli forces on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, his spokesperson said on Tuesday.
“The Secretary-General is deeply alarmed by Sunday’s strike by Israeli forces on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, incapacitating the hospital in Gaza City and dealing a severe blow to an already devastated health care system in the Strip,” the spokesperson said.

Hamas says it’s sending a delegation to Qatar to continue Gaza ceasefire talks

Updated 1 min 39 sec ago
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Hamas says it’s sending a delegation to Qatar to continue Gaza ceasefire talks

  • Hamas official says that the Palestinian militant group is sending a delegation to the Gulf Arab state of Qatar to continue the indirect ceasefire talks with Israel
  • Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 38 people were confirmed dead over the past day

DEIR AL-BALAH: A Hamas official said Monday that the Palestinian militant group is sending a delegation to the Gulf state of Qatar to continue indirect ceasefire talks with Israel over the war in Gaza, as the territory’s Health Ministry said that 38 people were confirmed dead over the past day.
The Hamas official said teams have been discussing terms for a new ceasefire agreement over recent days in Cairo, including a proposal that Hamas free eight to 10 hostages held in Gaza. But the Hamas official said a major sticking point remained over whether the war would end as part of any new deal.
The talks in Qatar are meant to take place later this week or next, the official said.
The Hamas official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media. Officials from Israel and Qatar had no immediate comment.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in January that lasted eight weeks before Israel resumed the war last month. The initial ceasefire agreement was meant to bring the sides toward negotiating an end to the war, something Israel has resisted doing because it wants to defeat Hamas first.
Hundreds have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire collapsed
Since the ceasefire fell apart last month, Israel has blocked aid from entering Gaza and forces have also seized swaths of the coastal enclave in a bid to ratchet up pressure on Hamas to agree to a deal more aligned with Israel’s terms.
On Monday, the United Nations humanitarian office warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is now likely to be “the worst” since Israel launched its retaliation to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, pointing to the Israeli ban on all supplies entering the Gaza Strip since March 2.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters: “No fuel has come in, no food has come in, no medicine has come in.”
The war started when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during the attack on southern Israel and took 251 people captive. Most have since been freed in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Fifty-nine remain in Gaza, 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.
Nearly 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count but says more than half of the dead have been women and children.
The Health Ministry said Monday that the bodies of 38 people killed in Israeli strikes were brought to hospitals across the territory over the past 24 hours. It said more than 1,600 people have been killed since the ceasefire collapsed.
The Red Cross says Israel has detained a Palestinian medic
Also Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that a Palestinian medic was detained during an Israeli military operation in which troops killed 15 first responders in the Gaza Strip. It was the first confirmation of the medic’s whereabouts since the March 23 attack in southern Gaza.
A statement from the Red Cross said it has not been granted access to visit him and did not say how it had received confirmation of his detention. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
The Israeli military initially said troops had opened fire on vehicles that raised suspicion because they were traveling without lights on. It later backtracked after a cellphone video emerged showing clearly marked ambulances traveling with their sirens flashing before the shooting.
The military also said it killed nine militants traveling in the ambulances, without providing evidence. It named one of the militants, but the name did not match those of any of the paramedics, and no other bodies are known to have been recovered.
The military says it is investigating further.


Sudan’s two years of war have ‘shattered’ children’s lives: UNICEF

Updated 15 April 2025
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Sudan’s two years of war have ‘shattered’ children’s lives: UNICEF

  • The number of children in need of humanitarian assistance has doubled in two years

UNITED NATIONS, United States: The number of major violations against children in Sudan, from killings to abductions, has increased by 1,000 percent following two years of civil war, UNICEF said Monday, calling for increased global awareness.
The United Nations children’s agency said that such incidents — which also include maiming and attacks on schools and hospitals — had previously been confined to a few regions.
But the ongoing nature of the conflict between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and Sudan’s army had resulted in their spread to further areas.
“Two years of violence and displacement have shattered the lives of millions of children across Sudan,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.
“The number of grave violations against children has surged by 1,000 percent in two years,” the statement said.
For example, the number of children killed or maimed has increased drastically from 150 verified cases in 2022 to an estimated 2,776 across 2023 and 2024, according to figures provided to AFP by UNICEF, which are likely underestimates.
Attacks on schools and hospitals have also gone up from 33 verified cases in 2022 to around 181 over the two prior years.
Furthermore, the number of children in need of humanitarian assistance has doubled in two years, from 7.8 million at the beginning of 2023 to more than 15 million today, UNICEF said.
“Sudan is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world today, but it is not getting the world’s attention,” Russell said, adding “we cannot abandon the children of Sudan.”
“We have the expertise and the resolve to scale up our support, but we need access and sustained funding,” she said.
The war between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, first erupted in April 2023.
Since then, the conflict has left tens of thousands dead and displaced 13 million people, according to the UN.
Famine has additionally been declared in at least five locations, including the Zamzam displacement camp in Darfur, where the RSF recently wrested control.
With the arrival of the rainy season and the risk of flooding, the situation in Sudan could worsen further. According to UNICEF, this year’s rainy season could result in 462,000 children suffering severe acute malnutrition.


UN chief says stop flow of weapons to Sudan

Updated 45 min 42 sec ago
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UN chief says stop flow of weapons to Sudan

  • The UN experts also said fighters had been recruited in neighboring countries like Chad, Libya and the Central African Republic and sent to South Sudan

UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday he is worried that weapons and fighters keep flowing into Sudan, perpetuating a civil war about to enter its third year.
The war, which erupted on April 15, 2023, has left tens of thousands dead, pushed parts of Sudan into famine and fractured the country into warlord-run territories.
“The external support and flow of weapons must end,” Guterres said without naming any specific country in a statement issued a day before the third anniversary of the start of the war between Sudan’s army and its paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
“Those with greatest influence on the parties must use it to better the lives of people in Sudan — not to perpetuate this disaster,” said Guterres.
But in their last report early this year the experts said they could not confirm actual transfers of military material along this route from Chad to Darfur.
They said, however, that weapons had come in from Libya but could not identify who sent them.
The UN experts also said fighters had been recruited in neighboring countries like Chad, Libya and the Central African Republic and sent to South Sudan.
They added there were credible accusations that Colombian mercenaries were fighting with the paramilitary side in Sudan.
“The only way to ensure the protection of civilians is to end this senseless conflict,” Guterres said Monday.

 


Israeli makes new Gaza ceasefire proposal but prospects appear slim

A girl stands amidst rubble in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 14, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 15 April 2025
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Israeli makes new Gaza ceasefire proposal but prospects appear slim

  • Hamas insists Israel commit to ending the war and pull out its forces from the Gaza Strip as agreed in the three-phase ceasefire accord that went into effect in late January
  • “Handing over the resistance’s weapons is a million red lines and is not subject to consideration, let alone discussion,” Abu Zuhri said

CAIRO: Mediator Egypt has presented a new Israeli proposal for a Gaza ceasefire to Hamas, Egyptian state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said on Monday, but a senior Hamas official said at least two elements of the proposal were non-starters.
Citing sources, Al Qahera said mediators awaited Hamas’ response.
Hamas said in a statement later in the day that it was studying the proposal and that it will submit its response “as soon as possible.”
The militant group reiterated its core demand that a ceasefire deal must end the war in Gaza and achieve a full Israeli pull-out from the strip.
Earlier, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that the proposal did not meet the Palestinian group’s demand that Israel commit to a complete halt of hostilities.
In the proposal, Israel also for the first time called for the disarmament of Hamas in the next phase of negotiations, which the group will not agree to, Abu Zuhri said.
“Handing over the resistance’s weapons is a million red lines and is not subject to consideration, let alone discussion,” Abu Zuhri said.
Israel did not immediately comment on the reported proposal.
The head of the Egyptian state information service told Al Qahera: “Hamas knows very well the value of time now and I believe that its response to the Israeli proposal will be quick.”
Israel restarted its offensive in the enclave in March, ending a ceasefire that went into effect in late January.
The latest round of talks on Monday in Cairo to restore the ceasefire and free Israeli hostages ended with no apparent breakthrough, Palestinian and Egyptian sources said.
Hamas insists Israel commit to ending the war and pull out its forces from the Gaza Strip as agreed in the three-phase ceasefire accord that went into effect in late January.
Israel has said it will not end the war unless Hamas is eliminated and returns the remaining hostages held in Gaza.
“Hamas is ready to hand over the hostages in one batch in exchange for the end of war and the withdrawal of Israeli military” from Gaza, Abu Zuhri said.
Since restarting its military offensive last month, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,500 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities have said. It has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave.
Meanwhile, 59 Israeli hostages remain in the hands of the militants. Israel believes 24 of them are alive.