A senior Hamas official said Friday the group will respond “very soon” to a proposal that includes extended pauses in Gaza fighting and phased exchanges of Hamas-held hostages for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Hamas and other militants in Gaza are holding dozens of hostages, after having abducted about 250 during their deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparked Israel’s blistering offensive on the enclave. More than 100 hostages were released during a one-week truce in November, in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Over 27,000 people have been killed and 66,000 wounded by Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza, the territory’s Health Ministry said Thursday. The Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, but says most of those killed were women and children.
Israel’s war in Gaza threatens to spill over into neighboring countries, despite persistent efforts by top officials around the globe to tamp down regional tensions.
Currently:
— Analysis shows destruction and a possible buffer zone along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel.
— Half of U.S. adults say Israel has gone too far in its war in Gaza, AP-NORC poll shows.
— A U.S. company says hostage-taking by gunmen at its factory in Turkey in Gaza protest has been resolved.
— Biden sanctions Israeli settlers accused of attacking Palestinians and peace activists in West Bank.
— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s the latest:
BRUSSELS — Belgium’s foreign ministry said Friday that it had summoned the Israeli ambassador to complain about the destruction of the country’s development agency office in Gaza.
Enabel’s office was in a six-story building in Gaza City. The ministry said it believed that none of the agency’s staff were present in the office when the building was bombed.
Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib, accompanied by Development Minister Caroline Gennez, shared their concerns with Israel’s envoy to Belgium, Idit Rosenzweig-Abu, the ministry said in a statement.
“The destruction of civilian infrastructure is absolutely unacceptable and does not comply with international law,” it said. Given the ongoing war in Gaza, Belgium decided two weeks ago to pull all Enabel staff and their families out of the territory.
“We very much hope that these people – including many children – will be able to leave Gaza quickly and unharmed,” the ministry said.
Belgium currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency. It plans to put the issue of compensation for damaged Gaza infrastructure financed by the bloc and its member countries on the agenda for debate.
BAGHDAD — In a statement released Friday, one of Iraq’s strongest Iran-backed militias, Harakat al-Nujaba, announced its plans to continue military operations against U.S. troops, despite allied factions having called off their attacks in the wake of a drone strike that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan Sunday.
Kataib Hezbollah, another powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, which has been watched closely by U.S. officials, said Tuesday it would “suspend military and security operations against the occupying forces” to avoid embarrassing the Iraqi government.
Akram al-Kaabi, leader of the Harakat al-Nujaba militia said in a statement Friday that “we respect their decision” but announced the continuation of his group’s military operations against U.S. troops. He dismissed U.S. threats of retaliation.
Al-Nujaba, which emerged from the larger Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq militia in 2013, has fought both opposition forces in Syria and the Islamic State militant group in Iraq.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iranian-backed militias that the U.S. has blamed for the deadly attack in Jordan, has launched more than 160 attacks on bases hosting U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 7, amid tensions over U.S. support for Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza.
These attacks have put Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in a difficult position. Although backed by Iran-aligned factions, al-Sudani has sought to maintain favorable relations with Washington and has denounced the assaults on U.S. forces.
BEIRUT — A senior Hamas official says his group is still studying a proposed multi-stage deal of prolonged pauses in Gaza fighting, accompanied by swaps of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, but at the same time he appeared to rule out key components of the proposal.
Osama Hamdan said the release of all hostages, believed to number more than 100, will only be possible if Israel ends its war on Hamas in Gaza and releases the thousands of Palestinian security prisoners Israel is holding.
He singled out two prisoners by name, including Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences in Israel for his alleged role in several deadly attacks carried out a generation ago. Barghouti remains popular among Palestinians and is viewed as a unifying figure.
Hamdan said he believes his group holds enough hostages to be able to win the freedom of all prisoners serving sentences in Israeli prisons.
A priority is to win freedom for those serving life sentences, regardless of the groups they belong to. In addition to Barghouti, he named Ahmed Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as well as Hamas prisoners and those from the Islamic Jihad group.
Hamdan told Lebanon’s LBC TV that Hamas insists on a permanent cease-fire, rejecting the proposal’s staged approach, with several pauses in fighting.
“There is no way that this will be acceptable to the resistance,” he said.
“We have tried temporary truces and it turned out that the Israelis don’t respect these truces but always violate them,” Hamdan said in an apparent reference to a weeklong truce in November after which Israel resumed its offensive.
Hamdan said Hamas wants an end to the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip as well as promises for the reconstruction of the territory.
GENEVA — The United Nations is warning that Rafah is becoming a “pressure cooker of despair” as thousands of people flee into the city from Khan Younis and other parts of southern Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war grinds on.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, also said the situation in Rafah is “not looking good” amid concerns that the city may be a new focus of Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
“Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair and we fear for what comes next,” he told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva on Friday. “It’s like every week we think, you know, it can’t get any worse. Well, go figure. It gets worse.
“It’s very important for us and for OCHA to put on record today our deep concern about what’s happening in Khan Yunis and Rafah in the southern part of the strip, because it’s really not looking good,” Laerke added.
Speaking from Jerusalem, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the representative for the World Health Organization in occupied Palestinian areas, said the U.N. health agency estimates that at least 8,000 Gazans should be sent abroad for medical care.
Of those, some three-quarters, or 6,000, need care for war injuries – such as treatment for burns or reconstructive surgery — while the rest require medical attention for conditions like cancer or other diseases, Peeperkorn said.
Since the start of the war on Oct. 7, a total of 243 people has been referred abroad, he said, adding: “That’s a pittance … that is way too little.”
He went on: “Rafah used to be a town of 200,000 people — a bit of a sleepy town … and now it’s harboring more than half of the Gazan population. So mind you, where should those people go? Maybe the point should be: it should not happen. And Rafah should not be attacked.”
BEIRUT — A senior Hamas official says the group will respond “very soon” to a proposal that includes extended pauses in Gaza fighting and phased exchanges of Hamas-held hostages for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
The official told The Associated Press on Friday a lasting cease-fire is the most important component for Hamas, and that everything else can be negotiated.
The multi-stage proposal was drafted several days ago by senior officials from the United States, Israel, Qatar and Egypt, and is awaiting a Hamas response. In Cairo, a senior Egyptian official with direct knowledge of the contacts said Hamas has not submitted a formal response but that it has sent positive signals.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the indirect talks are still ongoing.
The proposal being presented to Hamas includes a significant increase in aid trucks entering Gaza and allowing displaced residents to gradually return to their homes in the north, but does not explicitly call for a permanent cease-fire. Israel has said it would not agree to end the war as a condition for hostage releases.
Hamas and other militants in Gaza continue to hold dozens of hostages, after abducting about 250 during their deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. More than 100 were released during a one-week truce in November, in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
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Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed.
BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike on a southern suburb of Damascus early Friday caused material damage, state media reported, while an opposition war monitor said two Iran-backed fighters were killed.
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
State news agency SANA quoted an army statement as saying that Israeli warplanes fired the missiles while flying over Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It gave no further details other than saying that Syrian air defenses shot down several missiles.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike killed two Iranian-backed militants in a farm south of Damascus.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years. Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
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