Middle Eastern Headlines at 12:40 a.m. GMT
Hamas accepts Gaza cease-fire; Israel says it will continue talks but presses on with Rafah attacks
Hamas accepts Gaza cease-fire; Israel says it will continue talks but presses on with Rafah attacks
The bodies of five Israeli hostages retrieved this week from the Gaza Strip had been held in a tunnel deep underground, Israel's military said on Thursday. The retrieval operation was carried out using intelligence gathered and analyzed in recent weeks, said military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. It took place "in the heart" of the city of Khan Younis, where Israeli forces returned to operate this week, he said.
Israel has assassinated two dozen Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon since last fall amid an intelligence war employing cellphones, drones and fake rocks.
Senior figures in Israel's government have said it is closing in on its war aims of defeating Hamas militarily and the return of hostages seized on Oct. 7. After nine months of pummelling by one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East, Hamas is much weakened from the force that carried out the cross-border attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Early in the war, Hamas propaganda videos showed well-drilled fighters in body armour and battle fatigues, their torsos wrapped with ammunition belts.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in a scathing speech to Congress on Wednesday to achieve “total victory” against Hamas and denounced American opponents of the war in Gaza as “idiots,” taking a combative stance in a visit the Biden administration has hoped will yield progress in negotiations to end the fighting.
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for Israel to "respond substantively" to the top United Nations court's recent advisory opinion that Israel's presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and that it should end.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — An explosion ripped through the Russian-controlled Olenivka prison barracks two years ago, killing more than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war and leaving dozens injured.
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said Friday that the U.K. will not intervene in the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant against Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
WASHINGTON/CAIRO (Reuters) -Israel is seeking changes to a plan for a Gaza truce and the release of hostages by Hamas, complicating a final deal to halt nine months of combat that have devastated the enclave, according to a Western official, a Palestinian and two Egyptian sources. Israel says that displaced Palestinians should be screened as they return to the enclave's north when the ceasefire begins, retreating from an agreement to allow civilians who fled south to freely return home, the four sources told Reuters. Israeli negotiators "want a vetting mechanism for civilian populations returning to the north of Gaza, where they fear these populations could support” Hamas fighters who remain entrenched there, said the Western official.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Donald Trump on Friday at the former president's Mar-a-Lago estate for their first face-to-face meeting in nearly four years as the two sought to mend their political alliance. Netanyahu's visit to Florida came a day after the Israeli leader met in Washington with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris has urged Netanyahu to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas soon so that dozens of hostages held by the militants in Gaza since Oct. 7 could return home.
A group of 45 American doctors and nurses describe bloodshed in Gaza in an open letter to the White House, and demand immediate ceasefire.
Former President Trump on Friday claimed there will be a major war in the Middle East and potentially a “third world war” if he does not win November’s election. Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, one day after Netanyahu met at the White House with President Biden…
The remains of a teacher and four soldiers were found in an operation in Khan Younis on Wednesday.
High-speed trains around France were hit by several “malicious acts”, heavily disrupting traffic on the day of the high-risk opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. The AP's Angela Charlton explains.
After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves. Yasmeen al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis towards its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility. "We are not settled here either," said Dardasi, who like many Palestinians fears she will be uprooted once again.
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — When a group of military officers appeared on state television in Niger one year ago to make a dramatic announcement of a coup, they said they deposed the West African nation's elected government for two key reasons: its security, and economic crises.
STORY: :: Netanyahu played to a Republican audience on his U.S. visit, this analyst says:: Khaled Elgindy:: Arlington, Virginia:: July 24, 2024“I think it was very much on brand and in character for Netanyahu, who after all, presides over the most right-wing government in Israel's history. So, he was speaking in very stridently, kind of stark black and white terms, there is good and there is evil. We are the forces of good. We and the United States and we are battling the forces of evil.""He did not mention the ceasefire, very notably, which, after all, the president and others in the U.S. administration have said repeatedly that this is an Israeli ceasefire proposal. And for the Israeli prime minister to make no mention of what should be his own government ceasefire proposal that has now been adopted by the U.N. Security Council is, was odd.”Also notably absent was Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who would normally preside over the speech in her role as vice president.While dozens of Democrats boycotted his remarks and thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated nearby, Netanyahu dismissed criticism of an Israeli campaign that has devastated the Palestinian enclave and killed more than 39,000 of its residents, according to Gaza health officials.In his address Netanyahu sketched a vague outline of a plan for a "deradicalized" post-war Gaza and touted a potential future alliance between Israel and America's Arab allies.
The White House said in a statement that everyone has a right to protest but "shamefully, not everyone demonstrated peacefulness."
Many said she did not appear to express the same level of sympathy towards those who had died.
The Israeli Defence Forces announced on Thursday that they had found the bodies of five hostages killed during the October 7 attacks who have been held in Gaza ever since. Corpses of a kindergarten teacher and four soldiers were found during a military operation in Khan Younis, the main city in the southern Gaza Strip, where the IDF have launched new attacks this week. Those found are among the 120 hostages listed as still being held in Gaza. Israeli forces recovered on Wednesday the bodies of f
WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of protesters against the war in Gaza converged on Washington on Wednesday to condemn Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit, chanting “Free, free Palestine” as they marched toward the Capitol before police deployed pepper spray on some in the crowd.