GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Hopes rose Wednesday that Israel and Hamas may be inching toward another truce and hostage-release deal in the Gaza war, following talks in Europe and a visit to Egypt by the head of the Palestinian militant group.
While some talked of a truce, fighting raged and Gaza’s Hamas government said the death toll in the Palestinian territory reached 20,000.
Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there can be no Gaza cease-fire until Hamas militants are destroyed, but the White House expressed hope that the truce talks can bring results.
“These are very serious discussions and negotiations and we hope that they lead somewhere,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
His comments came shortly after Netanyahu, under pressure from Washington and other allies over civilian casualties, reiterated his goal of destroying Hamas and said there will be no cease-fire until that is accomplished.
“We won’t stop fighting until we’ve achieved all the objectives we’ve set ourselves: the elimination of Hamas, the release of our hostages and the end of the threat from Gaza,” Netanyahu repeated.
Late Tuesday he had told relatives of some of the remaining 129 captives held in Gaza that his spy chief was working on efforts to free them.
He said he had “just sent the head of Mossad to Europe twice to promote a process to free our hostages.”
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
In response, Israel began a relentless bombardment alongside a ground invasion. Hamas authorities say most of those killed in Gaza have been women and children.
Netanyahu has faced protests from hostage relatives seeking an urgent deal to free the captives.
“Every moment the hostages are there, is danger. They have no time,” Ofir Engel, 17, a Dutch-Israeli former captive, said at a press conference.
Mossad director David Barnea held a “positive meeting” in Warsaw this week with CIA chief Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a source familiar with the talks told AFP, asking not to be named.
Talks were ongoing “with the aim of reaching an agreement around the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza in exchange for a truce and the potential release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons,” said the source.
Qatar, backed by Egypt and the United States, last month helped broker a first week-long truce in which 80 Israeli hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
The Qatar-based chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, on Wednesday arrived in Egypt for talks with intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.
A Hamas official, speaking Wednesday on condition of anonymity, told AFP in Gaza that “a total cease-fire and a retreat of the Israeli occupation army from the Gaza Strip are a precondition for any serious negotiation” on a hostage-prisoner swap.
A source close to Hamas earlier said the Egypt talks would focus on proposals including a week-long truce that would see the release of 40 Israeli hostages.
Before leaving Qatar, Haniyeh met Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian but no details were released.
In Rafah, where fireballs and black smoke rose after explosions, residents expressed hope that talks would succeed.
“I wish for a complete cease-fire, and to put an end to the series of death and suffering. It’s been more than 75 days,” said Kassem Shurrab, 25.
Bassil Khoder, 63, said a cease-fire would allow displaced Palestinians like him to return home but it would also be good for Israelis. “The Jews are also our neighbors,” he said. “We won’t give up on them.”
An AFPTV live camera on Wednesday filmed two bombs hitting Rafah, in southern Gaza where many of the territory’s estimated 1.9 million displaced have fled.
The Hamas health ministry said Israeli strikes killed at least 12 Palestinians when houses and a mosque in Rafah “were targeted.”
Crowds swarmed the rubble, digging with shovels and a backhoe to try to free the victims. One body, blackened and open-mouthed, lay under a bright blue blanket on the blood-soaked ground.
“Enough, enough of this. We have lost everything and we can’t take it anymore,” Samar Abu Luli, a woman in Rafah, said after Israeli strikes on the city’s Al-Shabura neighborhood.
The Israeli army reported close-quarter combat and more than 300 strikes over the past day, while the death toll among its own forces rose to 134 inside Gaza.
It said “ground, aerial and naval operations were carried out on dozens” of militants and their infrastructure including rocket launch sites and military command and control centers in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza.
They also found underground infrastructure “with water and electricity systems” during a raid on residences of senior Hamas figures in Khan Yunis, the military said.
The United Nations Security Council was due to vote Wednesday on a much-delayed resolution calling for a pause to the war after members wrangled over wording.
The latest version of the text seen by AFP calls for the “urgent suspension” of hostilities.
The United States vetoed a previous cease-fire resolution.
Israel, which declared a total siege on Gaza at the start of the war, has since allowed in aid trucks through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and, as of this week, its own Kerem Shalom crossing.
The UN’s World Food Progamme said Wednesday it had delivered food through Kerem Shalom in a first direct aid convoy from Jordan as “millions face the risk of starvation.”
Fuel, water and medical supplies are also scarce, diseases are spreading, and communications have been repeatedly cut.
An Israeli military agency, COGAT, said it had started laying a pipeline from Egypt to deliver drinking water from a mobile desalination plant in a project led by the United Arab Emirates.
Visiting nearby Cyprus on Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen expressed support for plans to send humanitarian aid to Gaza from the Mediterranean island.
“We aim to create a fast track for humanitarian aid to Gaza through this corridor,” he told reporters.
The Gaza war has sparked fears of regional escalation, with exchanges of fire over the Lebanon border, and missiles from Iran-backed Yemeni rebels disrupting Red Sea shipping.
Hopes rise for Israel-Hamas truce deal as Gaza toll hits 20,000
https://arab.news/z5xfj
Hopes rise for Israel-Hamas truce deal as Gaza toll hits 20,000
- Netanyahu says no cease-fire until Hamas destroyed, White House expressed hope truce talks can bring results
- Qatar, backed by Egypt and the United States, last month helped broker a first week-long cease-fire deal
Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry says war death toll at 44,235
- Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 777 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry
GAZA CITY: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that at least 44,235 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,638 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog
- The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry
THE HAGUE: The world’s chemical watchdog said Monday that it was “seriously concerned” by large gaps in Syria’s declaration about its chemical weapons stockpile, as large quantities of potentially banned warfare agents might be involved.
Syria agreed in 2013 to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, shortly after an alleged chemical gas attack killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus.
“Despite more than a decade of intensive work, the Syrian Arab Republic chemical weapons dossier still cannot be closed,” the watchdog’s director-general Fernando Arias told delegates at the OPCW’s annual meeting.
The Hague-based global watchdog has previously accused President Bashar Assad’s regime of continued attacks on civilians with chemical weapons during the Middle Eastern country’s brutal civil war.
“Since 2014, the (OPCW) Secretariat has reported a total of 26 outstanding issues of which seven have been fulfilled,” in relation to chemical weapon stockpiles in Syria, Arias said.
“The substance of the remaining 19 outstanding issues is of serious concern as it involves large quantities of potentially undeclared or unverified chemical warfare agents and chemical munitions,” he told delegates.
Syria’s OPCW voting rights were suspended in 2021, an unprecedented rebuke, following poison gas attacks on civilians in 2017.
Last year the watchdog blamed Syria for a 2018 chlorine attack that killed 43 people, in a long-awaited report on a case that sparked tensions between Damascus and the West.
Damascus has denied the allegations and insisted it has handed over its stockpiles.
Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 after the government’s repression of peaceful demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry.
Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon
- The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries
DAMASUS: Syrian state television reported Israeli strikes on several bridges in the Qusayr region near the Lebanese border on Monday, with the defense ministry reporting two civilians injured in the attacks.
Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since its conflict with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon escalated into full-scale war in late September after almost a year of cross-border hostilities.
“An Israeli aggression targeted the bridges of Al-Jubaniyeh, Al-Daf, Arjoun, and the Al-Nizariyeh Gate in the Qusayr area,” state television said, with official news agency SANA reporting damage in the attacks.
The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries.
The attacks “injured two civilians and caused material losses,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, based in Britain, said the attacks had “killed two Syrians working with Hezbollah and injured five others,” giving a preliminary toll.
Earlier, the monitor with a network of sources in Syria had said the “Israeli strikes targeted” an official land border crossing in the Qusayr area and six bridges on the Orontes River near the border with Lebanon.
Since September, Israel has bombed land crossings between Lebanon and Syria, putting them out of service. It accuses Hezbollah of using the routes, key for people fleeing the war in Lebanon, to transfer weapons from Syria.
Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case
- A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to prison former senior officials, a businessman and others for involvement in the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds — one of Iraq’s biggest corruption cases.
The three most high-profile individuals sentenced — businessman Nour Zuhair, as well as former prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi and a former adviser, Haitham Al-Juburi — are on the run and were tried in absentia.
The scandal, dubbed the “heist of the century,” has sparked widespread anger in Iraq, which is ravaged by rampant corruption, unemployment and decaying infrastructure after decades of conflict.
A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
Thirteen people received sentences on Monday, according to member of Parliament Mostafa Sanad.
Most of them, 10, are from Iraq’s tax authority and include its former director and deputy, he added on his Telegram channel.
Iraq revealed two years ago that at least $2.5 billion was stolen between September 2021 and August 2022 through 247 cheques that were cashed by five companies.
The money was then withdrawn in cash from the accounts of those firms.
A judicial source told AFP that some tax officials charged were in detention, without detailing how many.
Businessman Zuhair was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the judiciary statement.
He was arrested at Baghdad airport in October 2022 as he was trying to leave the country, but released on bail a month later after giving back more than $125 million and pledging to return the rest in instalments.
The wealthy businessman was back in the news in August after he reportedly had a car crash in Lebanon, following an interview he gave to an Iraqi news channel.
Juburi, the former prime ministerial adviser, received a three-year prison sentence. He also returned $2.6 million before disappearing, a judicial source told AFP.
Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi, also currently outside Iraq, was sentenced to six years in prison — alongside “a number of officials involved in the crime,” according to the judiciary’s statement.
Corruption is rampant across Iraq’s public institutions, but convictions typically target mid-level officials or minor players and rarely those at the top of the power hierarchy.
11 killed in Kurdish-led attacks in north Syria: war monitor
- Seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in the attack and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control swathes of northeast Syria.
BEIRUT: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Monday 11 people including civilians were killed in attacks by a Kurdish-led force on positions of Turkiye-backed militants in north Syria.
“A woman, her two children and a man were killed... in the bombing of a military position... used by Ankara-backed factions for human smuggling operations to Turkiye,” the Britain-based monitor said.
It said seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in that incident and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control swathes of northeast Syria.
SDF special forces infiltrated a Turkiye-backed group’s military position and killed three militants, said the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
The SDF also booby-trapped a military position as they withdrew, in an attack that killed another four pro-Turkiye militants but also four civilians including a woman and her two children, the Observatory said.
On Sunday, 15 Ankara-backed Syrian militants were killed after the SDF infiltrated their territory, the monitor reported earlier.
The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019.
It is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkish troops and allied armed factions control swathes of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.
