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Tag: Hostage situations

  • A top Qatari official urges Israel and Hamas to do more to reach a cease-fire deal

    A top Qatari official urges Israel and Hamas to do more to reach a cease-fire deal

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    TEL AVIV, Israel — A senior Qatari official has urged both Israel and Hamas to show “more commitment and more seriousness” in cease-fire negotiations in interviews with Israeli media, as pressure builds on both sides to move toward a deal that would set Israeli hostages free and bring potential respite in the nearly 7-month-long war in Gaza.

    The interviews with liberal daily Haaretz and Israeli public broadcaster Kan were published and aired Saturday evening. They came as Israel still promises to invade Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah despite global concern for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering there, and as the sides are exchanging proposals surrounding a cease-fire deal.

    Qatar, which hosts Hamas headquarters in Doha, has been a key intermediary throughout the Israel-Hamas war. Along with the U.S. and Egypt, Qatar was instrumental in helping negotiate a brief halt to the fighting in November that led to the release of dozens of hostages.

    The sides have held numerous rounds of negotiations since, none of which produced an additional truce. In a sign of its frustration, Qatar earlier this month said it was reassessing its role as mediator.

    In the interviews, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari expressed disappointment in both Hamas and Israel, saying each side has made its decisions based on political interests and not with the good of civilians in mind.

    “We were hoping to see more commitment and more seriousness on both sides,” he told Haaretz.

    He did not reveal details of the current state of the talks, other than to say they have “effectively stopped,” with “both sides entrenched in their positions.”

    “If there is a renewed sense of commitment on both sides, I’m sure we can reach a deal,” he said.

    The Israeli journalists conducted the interviews in Qatar, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Israel.

    Relations between Qatar and Israel have been strained throughout the war, as some politicians in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have criticized Qatar for not putting enough pressure on Hamas.

    Israeli legislators have also cleared the way for the country to expel Al Jazeera, the Qatar-owned broadcaster.

    Al-Ansari’s remarks came after an Egyptian delegation had discussed with Israeli officials a “new vision” for a prolonged cease-fire in Gaza, according to an Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the developments.

    But the progress seemed minimal. The Egyptian official said Israeli officials are open to discussing establishing a permanent cease-fire in Gaza as part of the second phase of a deal.

    “They showed willingness to do so but not commitment,” the official said. Israel has refused to end the war until it defeats Hamas.

    The second phase would start after the release of civilian and sick hostages, and would include negotiating the release of soldiers, he added. Senior Palestinian prisoners would be released and a reconstruction process launched. He said an Israeli delegation is expected in Egypt in the coming days to discuss the proposals.

    Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said in a message to The Associated Press that a delegation from the group will also head to Cairo for talks. He did not elaborate, but Egypt’s state-owned al-Qahera TV said the delegation would arrive on Monday.

    Negotiations earlier this month centered on a six-week cease-fire proposal and the release of 40 civilian and sick hostages held by Hamas in exchange for freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

    There is growing international pressure for Hamas and Israel to reach a cease-fire deal and avert an Israeli attack on Rafah.

    A letter penned by U.S. President Joe Biden along with 17 other world leaders urged Hamas to release the hostages immediately.

    Hamas in recent days has released new videos of three hostages it holds, which appear to be meant to push Israel to make concessions.

    Israel meanwhile has massed dozens of tanks and armored vehicles ahead of an expected offensive in Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is seeking shelter. The planned incursion has raised global alarm because of concerns over potential harm to civilians. The troop buildup may also be a pressure tactic on Hamas in the truce talks.

    Israel sees Rafah as Hamas’ last major stronghold and has vowed to attack the militant group there in its bid to destroy its military and governing capabilities.

    The war was sparked by Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 into southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities, who say another 250 people were taken hostage. Hamas and other groups are holding about 130 people, including the remains of about 30, Israeli authorities say.

    Israel’s retaliatory assault on Hamas has killed more than 34,000 people, most of them women and children, according to health authorities in Gaza, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in their tally. The Israeli military says it has killed at least 12,000 militants, without providing evidence to back the claim.

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    Gambrell reported from Jerusalem and Magdy from Cairo.

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    Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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  • Terry Anderson, AP reporter abducted in Lebanon and held captive for years, has died

    Terry Anderson, AP reporter abducted in Lebanon and held captive for years, has died

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    LOS ANGELES — Terry Anderson, the globe-trotting Associated Press correspondent who became one of America’s longest-held hostages after he was snatched from a street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held for nearly seven years, has died at 76.

    Anderson, who chronicled his abduction and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his best-selling 1993 memoir “Den of Lions,” died on Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson.

    Anderson died of complications from recent heart surgery, his daughter said.

    “Terry was deeply committed to on-the-ground eyewitness reporting and demonstrated great bravery and resolve, both in his journalism and during his years held hostage. We are so appreciative of the sacrifices he and his family made as the result of his work,” said Julie Pace, senior vice president and executive editor of the AP.

    “He never liked to be called a hero, but that’s what everyone persisted in calling him,” said Sulome Anderson. “I saw him a week ago and my partner asked him if he had anything on his bucket list, anything that he wanted to do. He said, ‘I’ve lived so much and I’ve done so much. I’m content.’”

    After returning to the United States in 1991, Anderson led a peripatetic life, giving public speeches, teaching journalism at several prominent universities and, at various times, operating a blues bar, Cajun restaurant, horse ranch and gourmet restaurant.

    He also struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, won millions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets after a federal court concluded that country played a role in his capture, then lost most of it to bad investments. He filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

    Upon retiring from the University of Florida in 2015, Anderson settled on a small horse farm in a quiet, rural section of northern Virginia he had discovered while camping with friends. `

    “I live in the country and it’s reasonably good weather and quiet out here and a nice place, so I’m doing all right,” he said with a chuckle during a 2018 interview with The Associated Press.

    In 1985 he became one of several Westerners abducted by members of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah during a time of war that had plunged Lebanon into chaos.

    After his release, he returned to a hero’s welcome at AP’s New York headquarters.

    As the AP’s chief Middle East correspondent, Anderson had been reporting for several years on the rising violence gripping Lebanon as the country fought a war with Israel, while Iran funded militant groups trying to topple its government.

    On March 16, 1985, a day off, he had taken a break to play tennis with former AP photographer Don Mell and was dropping Mell off at his home when gun-toting kidnappers dragged him from his car.

    He was likely targeted, he said, because he was one of the few Westerners still in Lebanon and because his role as a journalist aroused suspicion among members of Hezbollah.

    “Because in their terms, people who go around asking questions in awkward and dangerous places have to be spies,“ he told the Virginia newspaper The Review of Orange County in 2018.

    What followed was nearly seven years of brutality during which he was beaten, chained to a wall, threatened with death, often had guns held to his head and often was kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time.

    Anderson was the longest held of several Western hostages Hezbollah abducted over the years, including Terry Waite, the former envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had arrived to try to negotiate his release.

    By his and other hostages’ accounts, he was also their most hostile prisoner, constantly demanding better food and treatment, arguing religion and politics with his captors, and teaching other hostages sign language and where to hide messages so they could communicate privately.

    He managed to retain a quick wit and biting sense of humor during his long ordeal. On his last day in Beirut he called the leader of his kidnappers into his room to tell him he’d just heard an erroneous radio report saying he’d been freed and was in Syria.

    “I said, ‘Mahmound, listen to this, I’m not here. I’m gone, babes. I’m on my way to Damascus.’ And we both laughed,” he told Giovanna Dell’Orto, author of “AP Foreign Correspondents in Action: World War II to the Present.”

    He learned later his release was delayed when a third party who his kidnappers planned to turn him over to left for a tryst with the party’s mistress and they had to find someone else.

    Anderson’s humor often hid the PTSD he acknowledged suffering for years afterward.

    “The AP got a couple of British experts in hostage decompression, clinical psychiatrists, to counsel my wife and myself and they were very useful,” he said in 2018. “But one of the problems I had was I did not recognize sufficiently the damage that had been done.

    “So, when people ask me, you know, ‘Are you over it?’ Well, I don’t know. No, not really. It’s there. I don’t think about it much these days, it’s not central to my life. But it’s there.”

    At the time of his abduction, Anderson was engaged to be married and his future wife was six months pregnant with their daughter, Sulome.

    The couple married soon after his release but divorced a few years later, and although they remained on friendly terms Anderson and his daughter were estranged for years.

    “I love my dad very much. My dad has always loved me. I just didn’t know that because he wasn’t able to show it to me,” Sulome Anderson told the AP in 2017.

    Father and daughter reconciled after the publication of her critically acclaimed 2017 book, “The Hostage’s Daughter,” in which she told of traveling to Lebanon to confront and eventually forgive one of her father’s kidnappers.

    “I think she did some extraordinary things, went on a very difficult personal journey, but also accomplished a pretty important piece of journalism doing it,” Anderson said. “She’s now a better journalist than I ever was.”

    Terry Alan Anderson was born Oct. 27, 1947. He spent his early childhood years in the small Lake Erie town of Vermilion, Ohio, where his father was a police officer.

    After graduating from high school, he turned down a scholarship to the University of Michigan in favor of enlisting in the Marines, where he rose to the rank of staff sergeant while seeing combat during the Vietnam War.

    After returning home, he enrolled at Iowa State University where he graduated with a double major in journalism and political science and soon after went to work for the AP. He reported from Kentucky, Japan and South Africa before arriving in Lebanon in 1982, just as the country was descending into chaos.

    “Actually, it was the most fascinating job I’ve ever had in my life,” he told The Review. “It was intense. War’s going on — it was very dangerous in Beirut. Vicious civil war, and I lasted about three years before I got kidnapped.”

    Anderson was married and divorced three times. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson, from his first marriage; a sister, Judy Anderson; and a brother, Jack Anderson.

    “Though my father’s life was marked by extreme suffering during his time as a hostage in captivity, he found a quiet, comfortable peace in recent years. I know he would choose to be remembered not by his very worst experience, but through his humanitarian work with the Vietnam Children’s Fund, the Committee to Protect Journalists, homeless veterans and many other incredible causes,” Sulome Anderson said in a statement Sunday.

    Memorial arrangements were pending, Sulome Anderson said.

    —-

    Biographical material for this obituary was prepared by retired Associated Press writer John Rogers. AP journalist Andrew Meldrum contributed from New York.

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  • Israel and Hamas dig in as international pressure builds for a cease-fire in Gaza

    Israel and Hamas dig in as international pressure builds for a cease-fire in Gaza

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    JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday blasted a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire that his country’s top ally, the United States, chose not to block. He said the resolution had emboldened Hamas and he vowed to press ahead with the war.

    As the war grinds through a sixth month, both Israel and Hamas have rejected international cease-fire efforts, each insisting its version of victory is within reach. The passage of the U.N. resolution has also escalated tensions between the U.S. and Israel over the conduct of the war.

    Netanyahu has said Israel can only achieve its aims of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of hostages if it expands its ground offensive to the southern city of Rafah, where over half of Gaza’s population has sought refuge, many in crowded tent camps. The U.S. has said a major assault on Rafah would be a mistake.

    Hamas says it will hold onto the hostages until Israel agrees to a more permanent cease-fire, withdraws its forces from Gaza and releases hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including top militants. It said late Monday that it rejected a recent proposal that fell short of those demands — which, if fulfilled, would allow it to claim an extremely costly victory.

    Netanyahu said in a statement that the announcement “proved clearly that Hamas is not interested in continuing negotiations toward a deal and served as unfortunate testimony to the damage of the Security Council decision.”

    “Israel will not surrender to Hamas’ delusional demands and will continue to act to achieve all the goals of the war: releasing all the hostages, destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and ensuring that Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel.”

    Israel has killed over 32,000 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally. The fighting has left much of the Gaza Strip in ruins, displaced most its residents and driven a third of its population of 2.3 million to the brink of famine.

    The Israeli military announced Tuesday that an airstrike earlier this month killed Marwan Issa, the deputy leader of Hamas’ armed wing in Gaza who helped plan the Oct. 7 attack. Issa is the highest-ranking Hamas leader to have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. Military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Issa was killed when fighter jets struck an underground compound in central Gaza between March 9 and 10.

    An Israeli strike late Monday on a residential building in Rafah where three displaced families were sheltering killed at least 16 people, including nine children and four women, according to hospital records and relatives of the deceased. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies arrive at a hospital.

    In the face of Hamas’ demands for a more permanent cease-fire, Netanyahu has vowed to resume Israel’s offensive after any hostage release and keep fighting until the militant group is destroyed. But he has provided few details about what would follow any such victory and has largely rejected a postwar vision outlined by the U.S.

    That approach has brought him into increasingly open conflict with President Joe Biden’s administration, which has expressed mounting concern over civilian casualties — though it has continued to supply Israel with crucial military aid and back Israel’s aim of destroying Hamas.

    The passage of Monday’s resolution by the U.N. Security Council resolution further deepened the divisions. The resolution called for the release of all hostages held in Gaza but did not condition the cease-fire on it. The Biden administration, which vetoed previous U.N. resolutions calling for a cease-fire, abstained in Monday’s vote, allowing it to pass.

    In response, Netanyahu cancelled a planned visit by Israeli officials to Washington during which the U.S. side was set to propose alternatives to a ground assault in Rafah.

    The move raised criticism in Israeli media that Netanyahu was straining Israel’s most important alliance in order to placate hard-liners in his governing coalition.

    “He is prepared to sacrifice Israel’s relations with the United States for a short-lived political-media coup. He has completely lost it,” Ben Caspit, a prominent columnist in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, wrote.

    He said Netanyahu has been trying U.S. patience by dragging his feet on ensuring more humanitarian aid gets into Gaza and on drawing up post-war plans. “Now, instead of doing everything to placate them, he is flailing about like a baby throwing a tantrum.”

    Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in Washington on a separate trip, held talks Tuesday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and with top U.S. defense leaders.

    Ahead of the meeting, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described civilian casualties in Gaza as “far too high” and aid deliveries as “far too low.” But he also repeated the belief that Israel has the right to defend itself and the U.S. would always be there to help.

    Gallant said he told Blinken “that Israel will not cease operating in Gaza until the return of all the hostages. Only a decisive victory will bring to an end of this war.”

    Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said the U.N. resolution showed that Israel faces “an unprecedented (level of) political isolation” and was “losing its political cover” at the Security Council. He spoke at a press conference in Tehran after talks with officials in Iran, a key ally of Hamas.

    The war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border and attacked communities in southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. It is still believed to be holding about 100 hostages and the remains of 35 others, after most of the rest were freed in November in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

    The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent several weeks trying to negotiate another cease-fire and hostage release, but those efforts appeared to have stalled.

    Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, which is currently hosting the talks, told reporters that the negotiations were still ongoing, without providing details.

    Hamas has previously proposed a phased process in which it would release all the remaining hostages in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the opening of its borders for aid and reconstruction, and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including top militants serving life sentences.

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    Shurafa reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip.

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    Find more of AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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  • UN demand for Gaza cease-fire provokes strongest clash between US and Israel since war began

    UN demand for Gaza cease-fire provokes strongest clash between US and Israel since war began

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    UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Security Council on Monday issued its first demand for a cease-fire in Gaza, with the U.S. angering Israel by abstaining from the vote. Israel responded by canceling a visit to Washington by a high-level delegation in the strongest public clash between the allies since the war began.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the U.S. of “retreating” from a “principled position” by allowing the vote to pass without conditioning the cease-fire on the release of hostages held by Hamas.

    White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the administration was “kind of perplexed” by Netanyahu’s decision. He said the Israelis were “choosing to create a perception of daylight here when they don’t need to do that.”

    Kirby and the American ambassador to the U.N. said the U.S. abstained because the resolution did not condemn Hamas. U.S. officials chose to abstain rather than veto the proposal “because it does fairly reflect our view that a cease-fire and the release of hostages come together,” Kirby said.

    The 15-member council voted 14-0 to approve the resolution, which also demanded the release of all hostages taken captive during Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack in southern Israel. The chamber broke into loud applause after the vote.

    The U.S. vetoed past Security Council cease-fire resolutions in large part because of the failure to tie them directly to the release of hostages, the failure to condemn Hamas’ attacks and the delicacy of ongoing negotiations. American officials have argued that the cease-fire and hostage releases are linked, while Russia, China and many other council members favored unconditional calls for a cease-fire.

    The resolution approved Monday demands the release of hostages but does not make it a condition for the cease-fire for the month of Ramadan, which ends in April.

    Hamas said it welcomed the U.N.’s move but said the cease-fire needs to be permanent.

    “We confirm our readiness to engage in an immediate prisoner exchange process that leads to the release of prisoners on both sides,” the group said. For months, the militants have sought a deal that includes a complete end to the conflict.

    U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted: “This resolution must be implemented. Failure would be unforgivable.”

    The U.S. decision to abstain comes at a time of growing tensions between President Joe Biden’s administration and Netanyahu over Israel’s prosecution of the war, the high number of civilian casualties and the limited amounts of humanitarian assistance reaching Gaza. The two countries have also clashed over Netanyahu’s rejection of a Palestinian state, Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the expansion of settlements there.

    In addition, the well-known antagonism between Netanyahu and Biden — which dates from Biden’s tenure as vice president — deepened after Biden questioned Israel’s strategy in combating Hamas.

    Then Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Biden ally, suggested that Netanyahu was not operating in Israel’s best interests and called for Israel to hold new elections. Biden signaled his approval of Schumer’s remarks, prompting a rebuke from Netanyahu.

    During its U.S. visit, the Israeli delegation was to present White House officials with its plans for a possible ground invasion of Rafah, a city on the Egyptian border in southern Gaza where over 1 million Palestinian civilians have sought shelter from the war.

    Last week, Netanyahu rebuffed a U.S. request to halt the planned Rafah invasion – vowing during a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to act alone if necessary. Blinken warned that Israel could soon face growing international isolation, while Vice President Kamala Harris said Israel could soon face unspecified consequences if it launches the ground assault.

    The Security Council vote came after Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution Friday that would have supported “an immediate and sustained cease-fire” in the Israeli-Hamas conflict. That resolution featured a weakened link between a cease-fire and the release of hostages, leaving it open to interpretation, and no time limit.

    The United States warned that the resolution approved Monday could hurt negotiations to halt the hostilities, raising the possibility of another veto, this time by the Americans. The talks involve the U.S., Egypt and Qatar.

    Because Ramadan ends April 9, the cease-fire demand would last for just two weeks, though the draft says the pause in fighting should lead to “a lasting sustainable cease-fire.”

    The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the resolution “spoke out in support of the ongoing diplomatic efforts,” adding that negotiators were “getting closer” to a deal for a cease-fire with the release of all hostages, “but we’re not there yet.”

    She urged the council and U.N. members across the world to “speak out and demand unequivocally that Hamas accepts the deal on the table.”

    Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. abstained because “certain edits” the U.S. requested were ignored, including a condemnation of Hamas.

    The resolution, put forward by the 10 elected council members, was backed by Russia and China and the 22-nation Arab Group at the United Nations.

    Under the United Nations Charter, Security Council resolutions are legally binding on its 193 member nations, though they are often flouted.

    Algeria’s U.N. ambassador, Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council, thanked the council for “finally” demanding a cease-fire.

    “We look forward to the commitment and the compliance of the Israeli occupying power with this resolution, for them to put an end to the bloodbath without any conditions, to end the suffering of the Palestinian people,” he said.

    Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, told the council that the vote “must be a turning point” that leads to saving lives in Gaza and ending the “assault of atrocities against our people.”

    Shortly before Monday’s vote, the elected members changed the final draft resolution to drop the word “permanent” from its demand that a Ramadan cease-fire should lead to a “sustainable” halt in fighting apparently at the request of the United States.

    Russia complained that dropping the word could allow Israel “to resume its military operation in the Gaza Strip at any moment” after Ramadan and proposed an amendment to restore it. That amendment was defeated because it failed to get the minimum nine “yes” votes — with three council members voting in favor, the United States voting against, and 11 countries abstaining.

    Since the start of the war, the Security Council has adopted two resolutions on the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, but none has called for a cease-fire.

    More than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed during the fighting, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The agency does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

    Gaza also faces a dire humanitarian emergency. A report from an international authority on hunger warned last week that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza and that escalation of the war could push half of the territory’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation.

    The United States has vetoed three resolutions demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, the most recent an Arab-backed measure on Feb. 20. That resolution was supported by 13 council members with one abstention, reflecting the overwhelming support for a cease-fire.

    Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution in late October calling for humanitarian pauses in the fighting to deliver aid, the protection of civilians and a halt to arming Hamas. They said it did not reflect global calls for a cease-fire.

    They again vetoed a U.S. resolution Friday, calling it ambiguous and saying it was not the direct demand to end the fighting that much of the world seeks.

    That vote became another showdown involving world powers that are locked in tense disputes elsewhere, with the United States taking criticism for not being tough enough against its ally Israel, even as tensions between the two countries rise.

    Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia and China on Monday of using the Gaza conflict “as a political cudgel, to try to divide this council at a time when we need to come together.”

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    Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Colleen Long in Washington and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed.

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  • Another top donor says it will resume funding the UN agency for Palestinians as Gaza hunger grows

    Another top donor says it will resume funding the UN agency for Palestinians as Gaza hunger grows

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    NICOSIA, Cyprus — Another top donor to the U.N. agency aiding Palestinians said Saturday that it would resume funding, weeks after more than a dozen countries halted hundreds of millions of dollars of support in response to Israeli allegations against the organization.

    Sweden’s reversal came as a ship bearing tons of humanitarian aid was preparing to leave Cyprus for Gaza after international donors launched a sea corridor to supply the besieged territory facing widespread hunger after five months of war.

    Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides told reporters late Saturday that the ship would depart “within the next 24 hours.” World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés told The Associated Press that all necessary permits, including from Israel, had been secured, and circumstances delaying departure were primarily weather-related.

    Sweden’s funding decision followed similar ones by the European Union and Canada as the U.N. agency known as UNRWA warns that it could collapse and leave Gaza’s already desperate population of more than 2 million people with even less medical and other assistance.

    “The humanitarian situation in Gaza is devastating and the needs are acute,” Swedish development minister Johan Forssell said, adding that UNRWA had agreed to increased transparency and stricter controls. Sweden will give UNRWA half of the $38 million funding it promised for this year, with more to come.

    Israel had accused 12 of UNRWA’s thousands of employees of participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. Countries including the United States quickly suspended funding to UNRWA worth about $450 million, almost half its budget for the year. The U.N. has launched investigations, and UNRWA has been agreeing to outside audits to win back donor support.

    On the eve of Ramadan, hungry Gaza residents scrambled for packages of food supplies dropped by U.S. and Jordanian military planes — a method of delivery that humanitarian groups call deeply inadequate compared to ground deliveries. But the daily number of aid trucks entering Gaza since the war has been far below the 500 that entered before Oct. 7 because of Israeli restrictions and security issues.

    People dashed through devastated Gaza City neighborhoods as the parachuting aid descended. “I have orphans, I want to feed them!” one woman cried.

    “The issue of aid is brutal and no one accepts it,” said another resident, Momen Mahra, claiming that most airdropped aid falls into the sea. “We want better methods.”

    The U.S. military said that its planes airdropped more than 41,000 “meal equivalents” and 23,000 bottles of water into northern Gaza, the hardest part of the enclave to access.

    The Health Ministry in Gaza said that two more people, including a 2-month-old infant, had died as a result of malnutrition, raising the total dying from hunger in the war to 25. Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said the toll included only people brought to hospitals.

    Overall, the ministry said at least 30,878 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. It doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tallies but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and its figures from previous wars have largely matched those of the U.N. and independent experts.

    The opening of the sea delivery corridor, along with the airdrops, showed increasing frustration with Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and a new willingness to work around Israeli restrictions. The sea corridor is backed by the EU together with the United States, the United Arab Emirates and other involved countries. The European Commission has said that U.N. agencies and the Red Cross will also play a role.

    President Joe Biden said Saturday that he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” in how he is approaching its war against Hamas in Gaza. Speaking to MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, the U.S. leader expressed support for Israel’s right to pursue Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack, but said of Netanyahu “he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”

    The ship belonging to Spain’s Open Arms aid group was expected to make a pilot voyage to test the corridor as early as this weekend. The ship has been waiting at Cyprus’s port of Larnaca. Israel has said it welcomed the maritime corridor but cautioned that it would need security checks.

    Open Arms founder Oscar Camps has said the ship pulling a barge with 200 tons of rice and flour would take two to three days to arrive at an undisclosed location where World Central Kitchen was constructing a pier to receive it.

    Biden separately has announced a plan to build a temporary pier in Gaza to help deliver aid, underscoring how the U.S. has to go around Israel, its main Middle East ally and the top recipient of U.S. military aid. Israel accuses Hamas of commandeering some aid deliveries.

    United States officials said it will likely be weeks before the pier is operational. The executive director of the U.S. arm of medical charity Doctors Without Borders, Avril Benoit, in a statement criticized the U.S. plan as a “glaring distraction from the real problem: Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate military campaign and punishing siege.”

    Sigrid Kaag, the U.N. senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, has said air and sea deliveries can’t make up for a shortage of supply routes on land.

    Meanwhile, efforts to reach a cease-fire before Ramadan appeared stalled. Hamas said Thursday that its delegation had left Cairo until next week.

    International mediators had hoped to alleviate some of the immediate crisis with a six-week cease-fire, which would have seen Hamas release some of the Israeli hostages it’s holding, Israel release some Palestinian prisoners and aid groups be given access for a major influx of assistance into Gaza.

    Palestinian militants are believed to be holding around 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others captured during the Oct. 7 attack. Several dozen hostages were freed in a weeklong November truce.

    In Lebanon, state media said five people were killed and at least nine injured by an Israeli airstrike on a house in the town of Khirbet Selm in the country’s south.

    Near-daily clashes have been happening in the Lebanon-Israel border area between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces in the past five months.

    Israeli strikes have killed abound 300 people there, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but also including about 40 civilians. On the Israeli side, at least nine soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed.

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    Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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  • Israel’s wartime Cabinet is shaken by a dispute between Netanyahu and his top political rival

    Israel’s wartime Cabinet is shaken by a dispute between Netanyahu and his top political rival

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    TEL AVIV, Israel — A top Israeli Cabinet minister headed to Washington on Sunday for talks with U.S. officials, sparking a rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to an Israeli official, in a sign of widening cracks in Israel’s wartime government nearly five months into its war with Hamas.

    The trip by Benny Gantz, a centrist political rival who joined Netanyahu’s hard-line government early in the war following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, comes amid deep disagreements between Netanyahu and President Joe Biden over how to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and create a post-war vision for the enclave.

    Talks aimed at brokering a Gaza cease-fire were underway in Egypt. International mediators hope to broker a deal that would pause the fighting and free some of the remaining hostages before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10.

    The U.S. was prompted to airdrop aid into Gaza on Saturday after dozens of Palestinians rushing to grab food from an Israel-organized convoy were killed last week. The airdrops circumvent an aid delivery system that has been hobbled by Israeli restrictions, logistical issues in Gaza and the fighting inside the tiny enclave. Aid officials say airdrops are far less effective than aid sent via trucks.

    U.S. priorities in the region have increasingly been hampered by Netanyahu’s hard-line Cabinet, where ultranationalists dominate. Gantz’s more moderate party at times acts as a counterweight to Netanyahu’s far-right allies.

    An official from Netanyahu’s Likud party said Gantz’s visit was without authorization from the Israeli leader. The official said Netanyahu had a “tough talk” with Gantz about the trip and told him the country has “just one prime minister.”

    An Israeli official said Gantz had informed Netanyahu of his intention to travel to the U.S. and to coordinate messaging with him. The official said the visit is meant to strengthen ties with Washington, bolster support for Israel’s ground campaign and push for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

    Gantz is set to meet with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, according to his National Unity party.

    Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the dispute with the media.

    Netanyahu has tanked in popularity since the war broke out, according to most opinion polls, with many Israelis holding him responsible for Hamas’ cross-border raid that left 1,200 people, mostly civilians, dead and roughly 250 people, including women, children and older adults, abducted and taken into Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

    The subsequent fighting has killed at least 30,410 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Around 80% of the population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, and U.N. agencies say hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.

    Critics say Netanyahu’s decision-making has been tainted by political considerations, a charge he denies. The criticism is particularly focused on plans for postwar Gaza. Netanyahu has released a proposal that would see Israel maintain open-ended security control over the territory with local Palestinians running civilian affairs.

    The U.S. wants to see progress on the creation of a Palestinian state, envisioning a revamped Palestinian leadership running Gaza with an eye toward eventual statehood.

    That vision is opposed by Netanyahu and the hard-liners in his government. Another top Cabinet official from Gantz’s party has questioned the handling of the war and the strategy for freeing the hostages.

    Netanyahu’s government, Israel’s most conservative and religious ever, has also been rattled by a court-ordered deadline for a new bill to broaden military enlistment of ultra-Orthodox Jews, many of whom are exempted to pursue religious studies. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, and the military is looking to fill its ranks.

    Gantz, who polls show would earn enough support to become prime minister if a vote were held today, has remained vague about his view of Palestinian statehood.

    A visit to the U.S., if met with progress on the hostage front, could further boost Gantz’s support. Israel has essentially endorsed a framework of a proposed Gaza cease-fire and hostage release deal, and it is now up to Hamas to agree to it, a senior U.S. official said Saturday. He spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House to brief reporters.

    Israelis, deeply traumatized by Hamas’ attack, have broadly backed the war effort as an act of self-defense, even as global opposition to the fighting has increased.

    But a growing number are expressing their dismay with Netanyahu. Some 10,000 people protested late Saturday to call for early elections, according to Israeli media. Such protests have grown in recent weeks, but remain much smaller than last year’s demonstrations against the government’s judicial overhaul plan.

    If the political rifts grow and Gantz quits the government, the floodgates will open to broader protests by a public that was already unhappy with the government when Hamas struck, said Reuven Hazan, a professor of political science at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

    “There is a lot of anger,” he said, listing grievances that were building well before Oct. 7. “The moment you have that anger and a coalition that is disconnected from the people, there will be fireworks.”

    Fighting raged on in Gaza, with Israeli strikes late Saturday killing more than 30 people, including women and children, according to local health officials.

    At least 14 were killed in a strike on a home in the southernmost city of Rafah on the Egyptian border, according to Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the hospital where the bodies were taken. He said the dead, including six children and four women, were from the same family. Relatives said another nine people were under the rubble.

    Israeli airstrikes also hit two homes in the Jabaliya refugee camp, a dense, residential area in northern Gaza, killing 17 people, according to the Civil Defense.

    ___

    Shurafa reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip and Magdy from Cairo.

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    Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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  • Live updates | Hamas responds to a proposed cease-fire as Blinken meets Israeli leaders

    Live updates | Hamas responds to a proposed cease-fire as Blinken meets Israeli leaders

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    Hamas has put forward a detailed plan for a new cease-fire and hostage release deal with Israel, which will be discussed when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Wednesday with Israeli leaders.

    Qatar’s prime minister said Tuesday that Hamas gave a “generally positive” answer to the latest plan for Gaza, which would effectively leave the militant group in power in Gaza and allow it to rebuild its military capabilities, a scenario that Israel adamantly rejects.

    More than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people is now crammed into the town of Rafah on the border with Egypt and surrounding areas, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Tuesday. The Palestinian death toll after nearly four months of war has reached 27,707 people, the Health Ministry in Gaza said.

    A quarter of Gaza’s residents are starving and 85% of the population has been driven from their homes, with hundreds of thousands surviving in makeshift tent camps.

    Currently:

    — Diapers and baby formula are hard to find in Gaza, leaving parents desperate.

    — Gaza’s main aid agency is on the brink. The European Union, a key donor, is wavering over what to do.

    — France pays homage to victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in Israel with national ceremony led by Macron.

    — Senate Democrats push to require that Biden consult Congress on weapons sales to Israel.

    — Qatar says Hamas gave a “generally positive” response to a cease-fire proposal.

    — Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

    Here’s the latest:

    BEIRUT — An official familiar with the talks over a new has clarified the sequencing of Hamas’ proposal.

    Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper, which is close to the Hezbollah militant group, a Hamas ally, on Wednesday published a copy of Hamas’ demands for the release of more than 100 hostages held in Gaza.

    A Hamas official and two Egyptian officials confirmed its authenticity. A fourth official familiar with the talks later clarified the sequencing of the releases. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media on the negotiations.

    In the first of three 45-day phases, Hamas would release all remaining women and children, as well as older and sick men, in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

    Israel would also withdraw from populated areas, cease aerial operations, allow far more aid to enter and permit Palestinians to return to their homes, including in devastated northern Gaza.

    The second phase, to be negotiated during the first, would include the release of all remaining hostages, mostly soldiers, in exchange for all Palestinian detainees over the age of 50, including senior militants.

    Israel would release an additional 1,500 prisoners, 500 of whom would be specified by Hamas, and complete its withdrawal from Gaza.

    In the third phase, the sides would exchange the remains of hostages and prisoners.

    The proposal would effectively leave Hamas in power in Gaza and allow it to rebuild its military capabilities, a scenario Israel has vehemently rejected.

    ___

    By Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue, Abby Sewell and Samy Magdy

    JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has revealed footage of an extensive tunnel network in southern Gaza that it says housed senior Hamas leaders and was used to hold at least 12 hostages at different times.

    According to a map released Wednesday by the army, the multi-branched tunnel beneath the city of Khan Younis was over a kilometer (about 0.6 miles) long and had at least 16 rooms, some of which were used as cells to hold hostages with metal bars across the entrance.

    Soldiers also uncovered a rudimentary kitchen, bathroom, and weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

    The tunnel was outfitted with electricity sockets, sinks, beds, and arched ceilings. Many of the rooms had decorative tiles on the walls.

    Israel has said destroying the tunnels is a major objective of the ground offensive in Gaza, which has focused on Khan Younis in recent weeks. The military says its forces battled militants inside the tunnel, killing several, without providing evidence.

    Several hostages freed in a cease-fire deal in November described being held inside tunnels. The military said three returned captives had been held in the tunnel beneath Khan Younis.

    Hamas is believed to have built hundreds of kilometers (miles) of tunnels, which it uses to shield its fighters. Israel has uncovered several tunnels in residential areas, running beneath or near schools, hospitals and mosques.

    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia says it won’t normalize ties with Israel without recognition of an independent Palestinian state and a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza.

    The Foreign Ministry outlined its “firm position” in a statement released Wednesday, two days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

    The Biden administration has spent much of the past year pushing for a potentially historic agreement in which Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel in return for U.S. defense guarantees, assistance in setting up a civilian nuclear program and major progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    In the latest statement, Saudi Arabia appeared to sharpen its demands.

    “The Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops and all Israeli occupation forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.

    Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – territories the Palestinians want for their future state – in the 1967 Mideast war.

    Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community and views the entire city as its capital. It has built Jewish settlements across the occupied West Bank that are now home to over 500,000 Israelis. It withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but along with Egypt imposed a blockade on the territory when Hamas seized power there two years later.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads a government staunchly opposed to Palestinian statehood and has said Israel will maintain open-ended security control over Gaza even after the war against Hamas.

    BEIRUT — Hamas’ response to a proposed cease-fire and hostage release deal has been published in a Lebanese newspaper.

    The document, whose authenticity was confirmed by officials, offers the clearest look yet at the group’s demands for the release of over 100 hostages it is holding in Gaza.

    The response to a plan drawn up by the U.S., Israel, Qatar and Egypt envisions a three-phase agreement unfolding over 4 ½ months leading to the end of the war and the release of all hostages.

    Hamas’ proposal would effectively leave the militant group in power in Gaza and allow it to rebuild its military capabilities, a scenario that Israel adamantly rejects.

    In the first 45-day phase, Hamas would release all remaining women and children, as well as older men and those who are ill, in exchange for the release of all the women, children, sick and older prisoners held by Israel. Israel would release an additional 1,500 Palestinian prisoners, including 500 specified by Hamas – likely high-profile militants serving life sentences.

    Israel would withdraw its forces from population centers, halt aerial operations and allow in far more humanitarian aid and the start of reconstruction. It would also allow displaced people to return to their homes, including in northern Gaza, and open all crossings.

    In the second phase, which would be negotiated during the first, Hamas would release the remaining hostages, mainly soldiers and civilian men, in exchange for more prisoners, and Israel would complete its withdrawal from Gaza. The two sides would exchange the remains of deceased hostages and prisoners in a third stage, which would give way to a long-term truce.

    A Hamas official and two Egyptian officials confirmed the authenticity of the document published by Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media on the sensitive negotiations. The newspaper is close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, an ally of Hamas.

    ___

    By Associated Press writers Abby Sewell and Samy Magdy

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  • Live updates | Hamas is expected to respond soon to a proposal that includes hostage releases

    Live updates | Hamas is expected to respond soon to a proposal that includes hostage releases

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    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.

    On Friday, the U.S. military began an air assault on sites in Iraq and Syria that are used by Iranian-back militias in retaliation to the drone strike that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan last weekend, officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations not yet made public. The strikes come after President Joe Biden and other U.S. leaders warned the U.S. would strike back at the militias in what would be a “tiered response” over time.

    Currently:

    — U.S. begins airstrikes on militias in Iraq and Syria in retaliation to the fatal drone strike in Jordan, officials say.

    — 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:

    UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations chief discussed efforts to end the fighting in Gaza, release the hostages and ensure support for humanitarian operations with Qatar’s prime minister, the U.N. spokesman said.

    Friday’s meeting between Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani took place as the U.S., Qatar, Egypt and others are negotiating a possible new humanitarian pause and hostage release – and as 16 countries have suspended funding for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA over allegations a dozen of its staff participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.

    U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric responded when asked whether the Qatari prime minister offered any new funding for UNRWA: “I think the issue of humanitarian funding was discussed in a very positive atmosphere and I will leave it at that.”

    Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, issued a statement Thursday saying the colossal humanitarian needs of two million people in Gaza face the risk of deepening as a result of the 16 donor countries’ decision to suspend $440 million worth of funding.

    He reiterated that if funding remains suspended, UNRWA will most likely be forced to shut operations by the end of February not only in Gaza but to millions of Palestinians across the region. The agency also operates in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

    Lazzarini reiterated Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ appeal to donors to resume funding. He also tweeted thanks on Friday for the “overwhelming support from people, countries and organizations around the world” to UNRWA’s appeal for donations.

    WASHINGTON — The U.S. military launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias Friday, in the opening salvo of retaliation for the drone strike that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan last weekend, officials told The Associated Press.

    President Joe Biden and other top U.S. leaders have been warning for days that the U.S. would strike back at the militias, and they made it clear that it wouldn’t be just one hit, but would be a “tiered response” over time. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations not yet made public.

    The initial strikes by manned and unmanned aircraft were hitting command and control headquarters, ammunition storage and other facilities. They came hours after Biden and top defense leaders joined grieving families to watch as the remains of the three Army Reserve soldiers were returned to the U.S. during a somber ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

    UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is warning that a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire between Israel and Hamas is putting “sensitive negotiations” for a prolonged humanitarian pause and release of all Israeli hostages “in jeopardy.”

    Linda Thomas-Greenfield told U.N. reporters on Friday that the U.S. is working “on a strong, compelling proposal” to release the Israeli hostages and get desperately needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. She said the U.S., which is Israel’s closest ally, has been working with Qatar, the go-to mediator in the Mideast war, as well as Egypt and regional partners.

    “If accepted and implemented, this proposal would move all parties one step closer to creating the conditions for sustainable cessation of hostilities,” she said.

    Algeria, the Arab representative on the council, circulated the draft resolution to the Security Council’s 15 members on Wednesday. It does not mention the hostages. Instead, it demands that all parties comply with international law, calls for unhindered access for humanitarian aid, and “rejects the forced displacement of the Palestinian civilian population.”

    The U.S. ambassador said the Security Council has an obligation “to ensure that any action we take in the coming days increases pressure on Hamas to accept the proposal.”

    Thomas-Greenfield said the Algerian draft resolution, however, puts the negotiations involving the U.S., Qatar and others “in jeopardy, derailing the exhaustive, ongoing diplomatic efforts to secure the release of hostages and secure an extended pause that Palestinian civilians and aid workers so desperately need.”

    WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this weekend will make his fifth urgent trip to the Middle East since the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza erupted in October.

    The State Department says Blinken will depart Washington on Sunday and travel to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the West Bank for talks with regional leaders that will last for most of next week.

    Blinken “will continue diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement that secures the release of all remaining hostages and includes a humanitarian pause that will allow for sustained, increased delivery of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement on Friday.

    “He will continue work to prevent the spread of the conflict, while reaffirming that the United States will take appropriate steps to defend its personnel and the right to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea,” Miller said. “The secretary will also continue discussions with partners on how to establish a more integrated, peaceful region that includes lasting security for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

    Blinken’s latest trip comes amid a flurry of diplomatic activity and discussions over a new possible deal for a pause in Israeli military operations in exchange for the release of hostages held by Hamas. Talks between the U.S., Qatar, Egypt and Israel to explore potential arrangements were held last weekend in Paris with participants saying they were productive but remained very much a work in progress.

    But the trip also comes as fears have grown in recent days for the possible escalation of the conflict with continued attacks on U.S. personnel and bases in Iraq, Syria and Jordan as well as stepped up military strikes against commercial shipping in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

    JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said late Friday its Arrow missile defense system intercepted a missile that approached the country from the Red Sea, raising suspicion it was launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

    The Iran-backed rebels did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack but have launched barrages of missiles towards southern Israel since the Gaza war erupted on Oct. 7. Virtually all the projectiles bound for Israel have been intercepted.

    The Israeli military said it was the fifth time during the war that it has deployed the Arrow — a system developed with the U.S. to intercept long-range missiles.

    The Houthis, a Shiite group who control most of northern Yemen, began targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea and The Gulf of Aden starting in November, and the attacks are ongoing.

    The Houthis say their offensive is aimed at backing Hamas and Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s war on Hamas. But they have frequently targeted vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, imperiling shipping in a key route for global trade.

    The Houthis are sworn enemies of both Israel and America, and organize weekly pro-Palestinian rallies in the capital, Sanaa, and other cities under their control.

    GENEVA — The U.N. satellite center says its latest analysis of available imagery indicates more than 69,000 structures in Gaza – or nearly one-third of all structures in the territory – have been at least moderately damaged in nearly four months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

    Of those, more than 22,000 structures have been identified as destroyed, UNOSAT said.

    The United Nations Satellite Center said Friday its latest assessment of the situation was based on high-resolution satellite imagery collected on Jan. 6-7, and was compared against similar imagery received from the skies on six other occasions since May.

    “In total, a staggering 69,147 structures, equivalent to approximately 30% of the Gaza Strip’s total structures, are affected,” UNOSAT said in a statement.

    It said the governorates of Gaza and Khan Younis sustained the most significant increase in damage compared to the previous look, on Nov. 26. More than 10,000 structures were damaged in each area.

    “The satellite imagery analysis conducted by UNOSAT underscores the widespread destruction and the affected population’s need for support,” the satellite center said.

    JERUSALEM — As part of a recruitment campaign, Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service posted photos on social media showing undercover agents putting on disguises ahead of a West Bank hospital raid in which they killed three Palestinian militants.

    Medical staff at the Ibn Sina Hospital in the city of Jenin said there was no exchange of fire during the raid and the three Palestinians were shot in targeted killings. Israel’s military said one of the men, later claimed by Hamas as a member, had been planning an attack on Israelis, but provided no evidence.

    Israeli undercover units in which agents try to blend in as local Palestinians have been active in the occupied West Bank for years. In Tuesday’s Jenin raid, some dressed up as civilian women in long robes and headscarves, while others pretended to be medical workers.

    One photo posted on the Shin Bet’s Instagram showed someone tweezing hairs from the face of a man whose facial features were blurred. Another showed a man sitting in front of a mirror, wearing a traditional Muslim prayer cap as someone tended to his beard.

    “You have already seen the end of the movie,” the post was captioned. “We went on an operation this week in the heart of Jenin to thwart terrorists planning attacks against Israelis.”

    The post appeared to be a recruitment effort on behalf of the Shin Bet. It directed viewers to apply for a position at the agency and “take part” in the next operation.

    Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Palestinian health officials say that 381 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, most by soldiers conducting near nightly arrest raids that triggered armed clashes and protests.

    JERUSALEM — The U.N. children’s agency said Friday that nearly every child across Gaza is in need of mental health support as the humanitarian crisis worsens in the besieged enclave.

    That amounts to more than 1 million children, double the number the agency estimated were in need of the services before the war.

    The conflict has “severely impacted” children’s mental health, said agency spokesperson Jonathan Crickx in Jerusalem.

    Children have been showing “extremely high levels of persistent anxiety, loss of appetite, they can’t sleep, they have emotional outbursts or panic every time they hear the bombings,” he said, based on the reports of UNICEF employees and other partner organizations partners in Gaza.

    Crickx said the length and intensity of the ongoing Israeli campaign, and the fact that most of the strip’s children are displaced, renders nearly all of them in need of psychosocial support.

    Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has prompted unprecedented destruction in the tiny coastal enclave and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population and pushed more than a quarter into starvation, according to the U.N.

    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.

    ___

    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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  • Live updates | Hamas is expected to respond soon to a proposal that includes hostage releases

    Live updates | Hamas is expected to respond soon to a proposal that includes hostage releases

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    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.

    ___

    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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  • UN chief calls on countries to resume funding Gaza aid agency after allegations of militant ties

    UN chief calls on countries to resume funding Gaza aid agency after allegations of militant ties

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    RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The secretary-general of the United Nations on Sunday called on countries to continue funding the main agency providing aid in Gaza after several of its employees were accused of taking part in the Hamas attack on Israel that ignited the war four months ago.

    The dispute engulfing the biggest provider of vital aid to Palestinians came as U.S. officials said negotiators were closing in on a cease-fire agreement. The emerging deal would bring a two-month halt to the deadliest-ever Israeli-Palestinian violence, which has stoked instability across the Middle East.

    Antonio Guterres warned that the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, would be forced to scale back aid to more than 2 million Palestinians as soon as February. The coastal enclave is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of the population facing starvation.

    “The abhorrent alleged acts of these staff members must have consequences,” Guterres said in a statement.

    “But the tens of thousands of men and women who work for UNRWA, many in some of the most dangerous situations for humanitarian workers, should not be penalized. The dire needs of the desperate populations they serve must be met,” he added.

    He said that of the 12 employees accused of taking part in the attack, nine had been immediately terminated, one was confirmed dead and “the identity of the two others is being clarified.” He said all would be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.

    UNRWA has 13,000 staffers in Gaza, nearly all of them Palestinians. It provides basic services, from medical care to education, for Palestinians families who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation — a majority of Gaza’s population. It has expanded operations during the war, running shelters housing hundreds of thousands of newly displaced people.

    More than 2 million of the territory’s 2.3 million people depend on it for “sheer survival,” including food and shelter, UNRWA director Philippe Lazzarini said, warning this lifeline can “collapse any time now.”

    The United States, which is the largest donor to the agency, immediately suspended funding over the weekend, followed by several other countries, including Britain, Germany and Italy.

    The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, destroyed vast swaths of Gaza and displaced nearly 85% of the territory’s people. The Hamas attack in southern Israel killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and about 250 hostages were taken.

    Two senior Biden administration officials said U.S. negotiators were making progress on a potential agreement under which Israel would pause military operations against Hamas for two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages.

    The officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said that emerging terms of the yet-to-be sealed deal would play out over two phases, with the remaining women, elderly and wounded hostages to be released by Hamas in a first 30-day phase. The emerging deal also calls for Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

    More than 100 hostages, mainly women and children, were released in November in exchange for a weeklong cease-fire and the release of 240 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

    CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to discuss the contours of the emerging agreement when he meets Sunday in France with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel for talks centered on the hostage negotiations.

    Despite the apparent progress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated in a televised news conference late Saturday that the war would continue until “complete victory,” including crushing Hamas.

    The dispute over UNRWA came as the International Court of Justice ruled Friday that Israel must do its utmost to limit death and destruction in its Gaza offensive.

    The top United Nations court has asked Israel for a compliance report in a month, placing added scrutiny on Israel’s military. The court’s binding ruling stopped short of ordering a cease-fire, but its orders were in part a rebuke of Israel’s conduct in its nearly 4-month war against Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

    The case brought by South Africa to the U.N. court alleged Israel is committing genocide, which Israel vehemently denies. A final ruling is expected to take years.

    The court also ordered Israel to urgently get aid to Gaza. The amount of aid entering the territory remains well below the daily average of 500 trucks before the war, and U.N. agencies say distribution within Gaza has been severely hampered by the fighting and delays at Israeli checkpoints.

    Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, saying the militants embed themselves in the local population. Israel says its air and ground offensive in Gaza has killed more than 9,000 militants.

    The offensive caused vast destruction in northern Gaza, where Israel says it has largely dismantled Hamas. The fighting is now focused on the southern city of Khan Younis and a cluster of built-up refugee camps in central Gaza dating back to 1948.

    The World Health Organization and the medical charity MSF have issued urgent warnings about the largest health facility in Khan Younis, Nasser Hospital, saying remaining staff could barely function with supplies running out and intense fighting nearby.

    WHO footage showed people in the crowded facility being treated on blood-smeared floors as frantic loved ones shouted and jostled. Cats scavenged on a mound of medical waste.

    The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has increasingly called for restraint and for more humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza while supporting the offensive.

    ___

    Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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  • Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpasses 25,000 with no end in sight to Israel-Hamas war

    Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpasses 25,000 with no end in sight to Israel-Hamas war

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    RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The Palestinian death toll from the war between Israel and Hamas has soared past 25,000, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said Sunday, while the Israeli government appeared far from achieving its goals of crushing the militant group and freeing more than 100 hostages.

    The level of death, destruction and displacement from the war already is without precedent in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet Israeli officials say the fighting is likely to continue for several more months.

    The slow progress and the plight of the hostages held in Gaza has divided ordinary Israelis and their leaders even as the offensive threatens to ignite a wider war involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen that support the Palestinians.

    The United States, which has provided essential diplomatic and military support for the offensive, has had limited success in persuading Israel to adopt military tactics that put civilians at less risk and to facilitate the delivery of more humanitarian aid. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also has rejected U.S. and international calls for postwar plans that would include a path to Palestinian statehood.

    The war began with Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostages back to Gaza.

    Israel responded with a blistering three-week air campaign and then a ground invasion into northern Gaza that laid waste to entire neighborhoods. Ground operations are now focused on the southern city of Khan Younis and built-up refugee camps in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

    Israel continues to carry out airstrikes throughout the besieged territory, including areas in the south where it told civilians to seek refuge. Many Palestinians have ignored evacuation orders, saying nowhere feels safe.

    Since the war started, a total of 25,105 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, while another 62,681 have been wounded, the Health Ministry reported Sunday. The death toll included the 178 bodies brought to Gaza’s hospitals since Saturday, Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said. Another 300 people were wounded in the past day, he said.

    The overall toll is thought to be even higher because many casualties remain buried under the rubble from Israeli strikes or in areas where medics cannot reach them, Al-Qidra said.

    The Health Ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures but says around two-thirds of the people killed in Gaza were women and minors.

    The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, but its casualty figures from previous wars were largely consistent with those of U.N. agencies and even the Israeli military.

    The Israeli military says it has killed around 9,000 militants, without providing evidence, and blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because it positions fighters, tunnels and other militant infrastructure in dense neighborhoods, often near homes, schools or mosques.

    The military says 195 of its soldiers have been killed since the start of the Gaza offensive.

    The war has displaced some 85% of Gaza’s residents from their homes, with hundreds of thousands packing into U.N.-run shelters and tent camps in the southern part of the tiny coastal enclave. U.N. officials say a quarter of the population of 2.3 million is starving as only a trickle of humanitarian aid reaches them because of the fighting and Israeli restrictions.

    Netanyahu has vowed to keep up the offensive until Israel achieves “complete victory” over Hamas and returns all the remaining hostages. But even some top Israeli officials have begun to acknowledge that those goals might be mutually exclusive.

    Hamas is believed to be holding the captives in tunnels deep underground and using them as shields for its top leaders. Israel has only managed to rescue one hostage since the war began, and Hamas says several have been killed in Israeli airstrikes or during failed rescue operations.

    A member of Israel’s War Cabinet, former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, said last week that the only way to free the remaining hostages was through a cease-fire. In an implicit criticism of Netanyahu, he said claims to the contrary amounted to “illusions.”

    Hamas has said it will not free more hostages until Israel ends its offensive. The group also is expected to make any further releases conditional on securing freedom for thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, including high-profile militants involved in attacks that killed Israelis.

    Israel’s government has ruled that out for now, but it faces rising pressure from families of the hostages, who are pushing for another exchange, and from Israelis frustrated by the security failures that preceded the Oct. 7 attack and by Netanyahu’s handling of the war.

    Thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv over the weekend to call for new elections.

    Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners are meanwhile pushing him to step up the offensive, with some calling for the “voluntary” emigration of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza and the re-establishment of Jewish settlements there. Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from the territory in 2005, two years before Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces.

    ___

    Magdy reported from Cairo.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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  • Hostage families protest outside Netanyahu's home, ramping up pressure for a truce-for-hostages deal

    Hostage families protest outside Netanyahu's home, ramping up pressure for a truce-for-hostages deal

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    JERUSALEM — Relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza protested Saturday outside the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing frustration over his government’s seeming lack of progress in getting the more than 100 captives released as the war in Gaza drags on.

    A group representing families of the hostages said they had “begged for 105 days” and now demanded that the government show leadership and take bold steps to free the hostages. A member of Israel’s War Cabinet has called a cease-fire the only way to secure their release, a comment that implied criticism of Israel’s current strategy.

    The protest outside the prime minister’s home and the remark by former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot were among signs of growing strife in Israel over the direction of the war in its fourth month. Netanyahu has said he will push for “complete victory” against Hamas but has not outlined how he would achieve it.

    Critics have accused him of preventing a Cabinet-level debate about a post-war scenario for Gaza, alleging Netanyahu was stalling in hopes of avoiding conflict that could potentially break up his right-wing ruling coalition.

    Israel launched its war against Hamas following the militant group’s unprecedented Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel and saw about 250 others taken hostage from the country’s south. Health authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza say Israel’s offensive has killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

    The offensive, one of the most destructive military campaigns in recent history, has pulverized much of territory and displaced more than 80% of its population of 2.3 million people. An Israeli blockade that allows only a trickle of aid into Gaza has led to widespread hunger and outbreaks of disease, United Nations officials have said.

    Netanyahu has insisted that the only way to secure the hostages’ return is by crushing Hamas through military means. But relatives of the remaining captives have been escalating their campaign seeking a deal for the release of their loved ones.

    More than 100 hostages, mostly women and children, were released during a brief November ceasefire in exchange for the release of Palestinian women and minors imprisoned by Israel. Israel has said that more than 130 hostages remain in Gaza, but only about 100 are believed to be alive.

    On Friday, the father of a 28-year-old man who has been held by Hamas since Oct. 7 began what he called a hunger strike outside Netanyahu’s home in the coastal town of Caesarea.

    Eli Shtivi, who son Idan was among the people kidnapped from a music festival in southern Israel, pledged to eat only a quarter of a pita a day — to show how little food some hostages were reportedly given on some days— until the prime minister agreed to meet with him. Dozens of people joined Shtivi late Friday and were still there Saturday morning.

    Eisenkot, the former army chief who is one of the five members of Israel’s War Cabinet, has called into question Netanyahu’s insistence that only Israel’s blistering air and ground offensive would bring the hostages home.

    Eisenkot, whose son was killed in December while fighting in Gaza, said during a television interview late Thursday that claiming the captives could be freed without a deal and a cease-fire “is to spread illusions.”

    The hostages “will only return alive if there is a deal, linked to a significant pause in fighting,” he said. Dramatic rescue operations are unlikely because the hostages are apparently spread out, many of them in underground tunnels, he said.

    As part of its search for the hostages, Israel’s military dropped leaflets on the territory’s southernmost town of Rafah that asked people to provide information about the captives. The leaflets, with photos of dozens of hostages, carried a message suggesting benefits for anyone providing information.

    “You want to return home? Please report if you identified one of them,” read the message, which also listed a phone number and a link to a website containing images and names of the hostages in Arabic.

    In Gaza, residents reached by phone following the end of a seven-day communications blackout reported heavy bombardment and fighting between militants and Israeli troops Saturday morning in and around the southern city of Khan Younis and the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya in the north.

    Israeli warplanes and shelling hammered areas in and east of Khan Younis, with gun battles raging overnight into the early morning in Bani Suheila, a town on the city’s outskirts, residents said. The town is one of the hotspots in Israel’s military operations in the Khan Younis area.

    Halima Abdel-Rahman, a woman displaced from northern Gaza who has sheltered in Bani Suheila since November, said Israeli airstrikes hit several buildings in the town over the last couple of days and that bombing was intense overnight into Saturday.

    The fighting has forced many families to leave their homes, many of which were reduced to rubble, and Bani Suheila is largely empty, she said.

    In Jabaliya, “the heavy bombing returned,” with Israeli warplanes striking buildings and open areas, local fisherman Assad Abu Radwan said.

    Israel withdrew a significant number of troops from the northern half of Gaza earlier this week after the military said it had broken up Hamas command structures there. However, Hamas gunmen continued putting up resistance in parts of northern Gaza, prompting renewed questions in Israel about the feasibility of the government’s stated goal of crushing Hamas.

    In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, meanwhile, mourners gathered Saturday for the funeral of a 17-year-old American Palestinian who was shot and killed a day earlier near the city of Ramallah.

    The circumstances of the shooting remained unclear Saturday.

    In a statement, Israeli police said they received a report Friday regarding a “firearm discharge, ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian.” Police did not identify who fired the shot but described the shooting as taking place over people “purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities” along a main highway.

    Police said the incident was being investigated, including by its internal affairs department.

    The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Friends of the teenager identified him as Tawfiq Ajaq, and said the family had returned to its home village in the West Bank from Harvey, Louisiana, about a year ago.

    Asked about the shooting, U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby said officials at the White House were “seriously concerned about these reports.”

    “We don’t have perfect context about exactly what happened here,” Kirby said. “Seriously concerned about it. And we’re going to be in constant touch with counterparts in the region to — to get more information.”

    In recent months, the Biden administration has repeatedly expressed concern about growing volatility in the West Bank, including violence by settlers against Palestinians.

    ___

    Becatoros reported from Athens. Greece. Jon Gambrell in Jerusalem and Najib Jobain in Rafah, Gaza Strip contributed to this report

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hama s-war

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  • Live updates | A deal to get medicine to Hamas hostages includes aid for Gaza

    Live updates | A deal to get medicine to Hamas hostages includes aid for Gaza

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    Medicine for hostages was en route to Gaza on Wednesday after Qatar and France mediated a deal between Israel and Hamas — the first agreement between the two since a weeklong cease-fire broke down in November.

    The deal came more than 100 days into a conflict that shows no sign of ending and has sparked tensions across the Middle East, with a dizzying array of strikes and counterstrikes in recent days from northern Iraq to the Red Sea and from southern Lebanon to Pakistan.

    The United States launched the third strike in recent days against the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, according to a U.S. official. The Houthis have attacked shipping in the crucial Red Sea corridor, saying they seek to halt Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas.

    In northern Gaza, Palestinian militants battled Israeli forces and launched a barrage of rockets from farther south. The Palestinian death toll rose to 24,285 people, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday. In Israel, around 1,200 people were killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war and saw some 250 people taken hostage by the militants.

    Currently:

    — A freed Israeli hostage relives the horrors of captivity. She fears for her husband, still held in Gaza.

    — U.S. Senators reject Bernie Sanders’ effort to curb Israel-Hamas war. The vote signals rising unease.

    — Iran attacks alleged militant bases in Pakistan. Islamabad says unprovoked strikes kill 2 children.

    — A chaotic wave of attacks and reprisals in the Middle East fuel worries of a broader regional war.

    — Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

    Here’s the latest:

    CAIRO — Hamas has provided more details about an agreement brokered by France and Qatar to deliver medicine to Israeli hostages held by its fighters in Gaza.

    Senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said Wednesday that for each box of medicine provided to the hostages, 1,000 boxes would be sent for use by Palestinian civilians.

    In a posting on X, he said the International Committee of the Red Cross would deliver all the medicines, including those destined for the hostages, to hospitals serving all parts of Gaza.

    The agreement also includes the delivery of additional food and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

    Abu Marzouk says Israeli authorities will not have the chance to inspect the shipments. He says Hamas insisted that Qatar provide the medications and not France because of the European country’s support for Israel.

    This is the first agreement reached between the warring sides since a weeklong cease-fire in November. Hamas and other militants are still holding around half of the estimated 250 hostages they captured during the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. Most of the rest were freed in November in return for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

    Those remaining in captivity in Gaza include several older men and others who require medication for chronic illness.

    JERUSALEM — The Israeli army says it killed a senior Palestinian militant in an airstrike in the West Bank.

    Ahmed Abdullah Abu Shalal, who the Israeli military said was responsible for infrastructure and had planned multiple attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem, was killed along with four others early Wednesday in the built-up Balata refugee camp in the city of Nablus.

    The Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli forces prevented medics from reaching the site of the strike, saying in a social media post that “gunfire was directed at our teams.”

    The military alleged that Abu Shalal and his cell planned to carry out an imminent attack and had received funding and guidance from “Iranian sources.” It did not provide evidence for the allegation.

    Violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza. Over 350 Palestinians have been killed in the last three months, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, mainly during Israeli arrest raids and violent protests.

    Israel has increasingly used airstrikes in the West Bank as the fighting has grown more intense, but targeted killings are still relatively rare in the territory.

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  • From Berlin to Karachi, thousands demonstrate in support of either Israel or the Palestinians

    From Berlin to Karachi, thousands demonstrate in support of either Israel or the Palestinians

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    KARACHI, Pakistan — From Berlin to London and Limassol to Karachi, tens of thousands of people took to the streets Sunday to mark the 100th day of Israel’s war with Hamas. Opposing demonstrations either demanded the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas or called for a cease-fire in Gaza.

    In the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, protesters waved Palestinian flags or wore the keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf, to express their solidarity with Palestinians in a rally organized by the country’s largest religious political party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

    The party’s Karachi chief, Hafiz Naeem Ur Rehman, called on the U.S. to stop backing Israel and compensate Palestinians for their losses. He also criticized Muslim leaders and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation for not doing enough to help stop the war.

    “Resolutions will not solve this problem,” Rehman said, adding that all “conscientious people” should support South Africa’s action to launch legal action against Israel for allegedly committing genocide in Gaza.

    Karachi resident Ishrat Zahid took Muslim leaders to task for “peacefully sleeping in their homes (but) not even thinking about protesting.”

    “This is why we have gathered here, to tell our Palestinian brothers and sisters that we are with them,” he said.

    In the heart of the British capital, thousands of people chanted “Bring them home now” in a demonstration to demand the freedom of 132 remaining hostages taken by Hamas militants in the Oct. 7 attacks that also killed some 1,200 Israelis and touched off the war.

    Gaza health authorities say the death toll in the enclave has already eclipsed 23,000 people, roughly 1% of the Palestinian territory’s population. Thousands more remain missing or badly wounded, while 80% of the population has been displaced.

    Protesters in London held posters with photos and the words “100 days in hell” to express their solidarity with Israel.

    Ayelet Svatitzky, the sister of a hostage still in captivity, warned “there is no more time” for those captured, and called for their release ahead of the 100th day since Hamas launched its attack on Israel.

    “My biggest fear is, I don’t know how long it’s going to last, I don’t know how long he can hold on and I don’t know what his condition is,’’ she said of her brother Nadav Popplewell, 51, one of two U.K. nationals who remain hostage.

    Popplewell was captured alongside his 79-year-old mother, Channah Peri. Though Peri was released during a November cease-fire, Svatitzky’s elder brother, Roi Popplewell, was found dead near his home just after the attacks.

    The demonstration comes just a day after thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated in London, Dublin and Edinburgh, calling for a permanent cease-fire in the conflict — part of a global day of action involving 30 countries.

    In a reflection of ongoing tensions, members of the crowd Sunday had to wait in line to get their bags searched before entering the square. Barricades were erected on the square’s perimeter, lined by police officers and security guards.

    A similar demonstration was held in Berlin, where pianist Igor Levit played a yellow piano as part of an initiative to keep the memory of the Israeli hostages alive.

    Played in public places from Tel Aviv to Tokyo, the yellow grand piano aimed to bring to mind 22-year-old hostage Alon Ohel, a pianist who was abducted by Hamas militants during the Oct. 7 attack on the Nova Music Festival.

    Alon’s mother Idit Ohel who was on hand for the demonstration said the piano is symbolic of “something bigger.”

    “Music is something that is beyond Religion. Beyond gender. And it’s something that we can understand,” she said.

    In the French capital, several hundred protesters converged in the city center holding placards with the faces of Israeli hostages, singing for their release around a large banner strewn on the ground reading, “Bring them home now!”

    About 100 motorcyclists waved Israeli flags and sported stickers of Israeli hostages on their bikes as they cruised around Paris in a ride to express support for Israel. The motorcycle ride followed an earlier, pro-Israeli bicycle procession around the city with cyclists waving Israeli flags and chanting “Free the hostages.”

    On Cyprus’ southern coastline outside the town of Limassol, several hundred protesters waved Palestinian flags and held placards outside the entrance of a British air force base calling for a “Free Palestine” and an end to the “siege of Gaza.”

    Protesters handed authorities at RAF Akrotiri a petition demanding an end to the use of the air base as a launchpad for airstrikes in the region and the alleged transfer of arms to Israel from there.

    British aircraft had taken off from RAF Akrotiri — one of two military bases that Britain maintains in Cyprus — to strike Houthi targets in Yemen in recent days.

    A British Ministry of Defense spokesperson said that no U.K. aircraft have delivered any lethal cargo to Israel and that the U.K. government is “focused on getting significantly more aid to Gaza” after delivering about 96 tons of British and Cypriot aid from Cyprus to Egypt for the people in the Palestinian enclave.

    In neighboring Turkey, about 2,000 marchers waved Palestinian and Turkish flags in Istanbul while paying homage to nine Turkish soldiers who were killed in northern Iraq last week.

    Similar demonstrations organized by Turkey’s Humanitarian Relief Foundation were held in other Turkish cities. Foundation representative Osman Delibas linked the war in Gaza and hostilities in Iraq. Turkey holds Kurdish militants in Iraq responsible for the death of its soldiers.

    “Those who supported terrorist organizations and unleashed them on us are the same ones who committed genocide in Gaza,” state-run Anadolu news agency quoted Delibas as saying.

    At the Vatican, Pope Francis told the faithful in St. Peter’s Square that modern warfare is “a crime against humanity” because it “sows death among civilians and destroys cities and infrastructure.” In his weekly appearance at the Vatican window overlooking the Square, the pope lamented that “arms continue to kill and destroy” when at the start of the year “we exchanged wishes for peace,” urging people not to forget those who “suffer the cruelty of war” around the world especially in Ukraine, Palestine and Israel.

    In Lisbon, Portugal, ballet dancer Irina Almeida joined several thousand marchers to demand a cease-fire in Gaza as they made their way from the U.S. to the Israeli embassies, chanting “Yes to peace” and “No to war.”

    “It’s not about 100 days, it’s 75 years,” said Almeida. “This is the 21st century and this should have never happened in the history of humankind, let alone at a time when we say we are so developed.”

    ___

    Kirka contributed from London and Hadjicostis from Nicosia, Cyprus. Associated Press photographer Christophe Ena in Paris, Associated Press videographers Fanny Brodersen in Berlin and Helena Alves in Lisbon, Associated Press writers Andrew Wilks in Istanbul and Frances D’Emilio in Rome contributed to this story.

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  • Israel faces new calls for truce after killing of hostages raises alarm about its conduct in Gaza

    Israel faces new calls for truce after killing of hostages raises alarm about its conduct in Gaza

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    DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israel’s government faced calls for a cease-fire from some of its closest European allies and from protesters at home on Sunday after a series of shootings, including of three hostages who waved a white flag, added to mounting concerns about its conduct in the 10-week-old war in Gaza.

    The protesters urge the government to renew hostage negotiations with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, whom it has vowed to destroy. Israel could also face pressure to scale back major combat operations when U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visits Monday. Washington is expressing growing unease with civilian casualties even while as it provides vital military and diplomatic support.

    The war has flattened large parts of northern Gaza, killed thousands of civilians and driven most of the population to the southern part of the besieged territory, where many are in crowded shelters and tent camps. Some 1.9 million Palestinians — nearly 85% of Gaza’s population — have fled their homes.

    They survive off a trickle of humanitarian aid. Israel said that starting Sunday, U.N. aid trucks would be able to enter Gaza from a second location, Kerem Shalom, in Israel.

    Dozens of desperate Palestinians surrounded aid trucks after they drove in through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, forcing some to stop before climbing aboard, pulling down boxes and carrying them off. Other trucks appeared to be guarded by masked people carrying sticks.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “will continue to fight until the end,” with the goal of eliminating Hamas, which triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people that day, mostly civilians, and captured scores of hostages.

    Netanyahu vowed to bring back the estimated 129 hostages still in captivity. Anger over the mistaken killing of hostages is likely to increase pressure on him to renew Qatar-mediated negotiations with Hamas over swapping more of the remaining captives for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

    Gaza, meanwhile, saw telecom services gradually resume after a four-day communications blackout, the longest of several outages during the war. Aid groups say they complicate rescue efforts and make it more difficult to monitor the toll on civilians.

    In Israel on Sunday, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna called for an “immediate truce” aimed at releasing more hostages, getting larger amounts of aid into Gaza and moving toward “the beginning of a political solution.”

    France’s Foreign Ministry earlier said an employee was killed in an Israeli strike on a home in Rafah on Wednesday. It condemned the strike, which it said killed several civilians, and demanded clarification from Israeli authorities.

    The foreign ministers of the U.K. and Germany, meanwhile, called for a “sustainable” cease-fire, saying too many civilians had been killed.

    “Israel will not win this war if its operations destroy the prospect of peaceful co-existence with Palestinians,” British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wrote in the U.K.’s Sunday Times.

    The U.S. defense secretary is set to travel to Israel to continue discussions on a timetable for ending the war’s most intense phase. Israeli and U.S. officials have spoken of a transition to more targeted strikes aimed at killing Hamas leaders and rescuing hostages, without saying when it would occur.

    Hamas has said no more hostages will be released until the war ends, and that in exchange it will demand the release of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants.

    Hamas released over 100 of more than 240 hostages captured on Oct. 7 in exchange for the release of scores of Palestinian prisoners during a brief cease-fire in November. Nearly all freed on both sides were women and minors. Israel has rescued one hostage.

    The Israeli military said Sunday it had discovered a large tunnel in Gaza close to what was once a busy crossing into Israel, raising new questions about how Israeli surveillance missed such conspicuous attack preparations by Hamas.

    Military officials said Saturday that the three hostages who were mistakenly shot by Israeli troops had tried to signal that they posed no harm. It was Israel’s first such acknowledgement of harming hostages in the war.

    The hostages, all in their 20s, were killed Friday in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops are engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas. An Israeli military official said the shootings were against the army’s rules of engagement and were being investigated at the highest level.

    Israel says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians and accuses Hamas of using them as human shields. But Palestinians and rights groups have repeatedly accused Israeli forces of recklessly endangering civilians and firing on those who do not threaten them, both in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, which has seen a surge of violence since the war began.

    Pope Francis on Sunday called for peace, saying “unarmed civilians are being bombed and shot at, and this has even happened inside the Holy Family parish complex, where there are no terrorists but families, children and sick people with disabilities, nuns.” He spoke after the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said two Christian women at a church compound in Gaza were killed by Israeli sniper fire.

    A British lawmaker, Layla Moran, said several family members were among hundreds sheltering in the compound. “This is a church. It’s a week before Christmas. This is Advent. This is an important time in the Christian family’s religious calendar. And there is a sniper killing women and firing at children,” she asserted.

    In Gaza, Palestinians on several occasions have said Israeli soldiers opened fire at fleeing civilians.

    The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory said Thursday in its last update before the communications blackout. It has said that thousands more casualties are buried under the rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but has said that most of those killed were women and children.

    On Sunday, five people were killed and many injured after a reported Israeli airstrike hit near a U.N.-run school in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis where displaced Palestinians were sheltering. A cameraman with The Associated Press counted five bodies delivered to a hospital.

    The plight of Palestinian civilians has gotten little attention inside Israel, where many are still deeply traumatized by the Oct. 7 attack and where support for the war remains strong.

    Israel’s military says 121 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza offensive. It says it has killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence.

    ___

    Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed to this report.

    ___

    Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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  • Bombs are falling on Gaza again. Who are the hostages still remaining in the besieged strip?

    Bombs are falling on Gaza again. Who are the hostages still remaining in the besieged strip?

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    JERUSALEM — A weeklong cease-fire that brought the exchanges of dozens of hostages held by Hamas for scores of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel gave way Friday morning to resumed fighting between Israel and Hamas. As mediators scuttle between the warring sides in a last-ditch effort to broker another swap, questions emerge on who remains in captivity in the besieged enclave.

    Hamas and other militants seized around 247 hostages in their deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed. Israel has pummeled the Gaza Strip in return, killing at least 13,300 people, two-thirds of them women and children, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled territory.

    Here’s a closer look at the fate of the hostages.

    Israel said on Friday that 136 hostages remain in Gaza. They include 119 men and 17 women and children, according to military spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Roughly 10 of the hostages are 75 and older, the Prime Minister’s Office said Friday.

    The vast majority are Israeli while 11 are foreign nationals, including eight from Thailand, one from Nepal and Tanzania each, and one French-Mexican.

    Earlier, government spokesperson Eylon Levy listed the youngest hostage, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, his 4-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri as still being among the hostages. The military has said it’s investigating a Hamas claim that the boys and their mother were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

    Hagari provided no information about the three.

    Families of hostages who have not been released are still waiting in desperation, calling on the government to bring their loved ones home.

    They hear reports from the families of recently freed hostages that conditions are difficult and worry their loved ones do not have sufficient food and water. They plead with the Red Cross to bring their relatives badly needed medicine. They agonize as mere crumbs of information about their relatives surface.

    Sharone Lifshitz, whose mother was freed in October, heard this week that a returned hostage had seen her father, 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz, in captivity. Her father was last seen shot while militants carted him off to Gaza.

    She says the news was a “ray of light” but that she wonders if it’s still true.

    “My father is ill, is frail. He needs medicine,” she said. “I don’t know how long he can survive in such harsh conditions.”

    She said the return of women and children hostages has been bittersweet as their husbands and fathers remain in captivity. The idea that children would be able to recover from captivity while their fathers remain hostages was “unthinkable,” she added.

    As the cease-fire waned, the military said Friday that four hostages were reported to have died in captivity, including the oldest person held hostage.

    All the four, 56-year old Maya Goren, 86-year old Arye Zalmanovich, 54-year-old Ronan Engel, and 75-year-old Eliyahu Margalit, were from Kibbutz Nir Oz. The kibbutz was devastated in the attack, with roughly a quarter of its people killed or kidnapped.

    On Thursday, the military announced the death of Ofir Tzarfati, another Israeli believed to have been held hostage. Two other hostages have died in Hamas captivity since Oct. 7, according to the military.

    Officials have said little about how the deaths were determined but the army has said it has collected valuable information from the returned hostages.

    Zalmanovich, a father of two and grandfather of five, was a founder of Kibbutz Nir Oz, a statement from the missing families group said. Goren was a mother of four and a kindergarten teacher for the kibbutz. Her husband was killed by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.

    Engel, a father of three, was a photographer and volunteer paramedic whose wife and two daughters were released from Gaza this week, the group said.

    The group did not immediately release information on Margalit.

    During the cease-fire, some 110 hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza were returned to their families, Israel’s government said Friday. They include 86 Israeli citizens and 24 foreign nationals, most of them Thais.

    The returnees have mostly appeared in stable health condition, able to walk and speak normally though many lost weight in captivity. One 84-year-old hostage returned in critical condition after not receiving proper medical care, doctors said. Another came back on crutches.

    Families have greeted the return of their loved ones with joy and excitement, but doctors have warned of the psychological toll of captivity and say they face a long road to recovery.

    There have been no in-depth stories of the hostages’ ordeal or captivity as the government has urged those released, their families and the media not to make public details of their time as prisoners to help ensure the safety of those still being held.

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  • Live updates | More Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners are released under truce

    Live updates | More Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners are released under truce

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    Eight Israeli hostages were released from Hamas captivity Thursday in the Gaza Strip as part of a temporary cease-fire deal that has lasted seven days, the Israeli military said.

    Israel freed 30 Palestinian prisoners in the early hours of Friday under the truce deal, which has paused the deadliest fighting in decades between Israel and Palestinians.

    International pressure has mounted for the truce to be upheld as long as possible after weeks of Israeli bombardment and a ground campaign following Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.

    Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israel, and more than three-quarters of the population of 2.3 million have been uprooted, leading to a humanitarian crisis.

    Israel has vowed to resume the fighting — with the goal of dismantling Hamas — once the cease-fire ends.

    Currently:

    — Wartime Israel shows little tolerance for Palestinian dissent.

    — Blinken urges Israel to comply with international law and spare civilians.

    — A friendship forged over 7 weeks of captivity lives on as freed women are reunited.

    — Families reunite with 17 Thai hostages freed by Hamas.

    — Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

    Here’s what’s happening in the war:

    Mia Schem was released Thursday from captivity in Gaza on Thursday. The 21-year-old French Israeli woman was shown with a badly bruised arm being bandaged up while being held hostage in a video released by Hamas after its deadly rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

    Also freed were Bilal Alziadana, 18, and his sister, Aisha, 17. The two are members of Israel’s Bedouin Arab community and had accompanied their father on Oct. 7 to work on a dairy farm on a kibbutz, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, a grassroots group representing families of hostages. It said their father and an older brother remain in captivity.

    In what has become a daily ritual, Hamas also released a video showing the hostages being turned over to the Red Cross by militants. In one scene, masked gunmen escorted two hostages to waiting vehicles as crowds of onlookers shouted and whistled at them.

    A busload of 30 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel has been welcomed home in the West Bank.

    The bus arrived early Friday in the city of Ramallah, hours after Hamas militants released eight Israeli hostages after eight weeks of captivity in the Gaza Strip.

    Dozens of men, some holding green Hamas flags, greeted the prisoners. The men were hugged and the crowd chanted, “God is great.”

    The exchanges have been taking place nightly since Nov. 24 as part of a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. The cease-fire is set to expire Friday, but international mediators are working to extend it by at least another day. Israel has vowed to resume its offensive against Hamas in Gaza once the truce ends.

    JERUSALEM — Hamas has freed six of Israeli hostages held in Gaza on Thursday evening, Israel’s military said, hours after releasing two Israeli women.

    The Red Cross in Gaza has taken all the freed hostages into Israel, where they were going to hospitals and would be reunited with their families, according to the Israeli military.

    At least 10 Israelis a day, along with other nationals, have been released during the truce, in return for Israel’s release of at least 30 Palestinian prisoners.

    Asked why Hamas was releasing fewer than the 10 hostages a day outlined in the cease-fire agreement, the Israeli military’s chief spokesperson noted that 12 Israeli citizens had been released the day before, implying that the overall total had met Israeli demands.

    “We insist on the maximum each day,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.

    TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stepped up calls for Israel to comply with international law and spare civilians as it wages its war against Hamas in Gaza.

    Blinken, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials on his third visit to the region since the start of the war, said he hoped the cease-fire could be extended and more hostages could be released.

    Blinken also said that if Israel resumes the war and moves against southern Gaza to pursue Hamas, it must do so in “compliance with international humanitarian law” and must have “a clear plan in place” to protect civilians.

    He said Israeli leaders understood that ”the massive levels of civilian life and displacement scale we saw in the north not be repeated in the south.”

    WASHINGTON — The White House condemned Thursday’s deadly attack by two Palestinian gunmen on people waiting for buses along a main highway entering Jerusalem, saying the attack was “stark reminder” of the enemy Israel is facing.

    National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the attack, which Hamas claimed responsibility for, “technically” didn’t violate the terms of the ongoing truce between Israel and Hamas, which only covers Gaza.

    “I mean, if anybody’s guessing and wondering whether Hamas still has murderous intentions against the Israeli people, just look at what happened in Jerusalem today,” Kirby said.

    Kirby also expressed hope that the truce, which was extended for a seventh day on Thursday, will be extended again.

    “We’re working on it literally by the hour to see if we can get this seventh day turned into an eighth and ninth and 10th and beyond,” he said.

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  • Gunmen wound seven in rush hour attack near Jerusalem

    Gunmen wound seven in rush hour attack near Jerusalem

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    RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israel and Hamas on Thursday agreed to extend their cease-fire by another day, just minutes before it was set to expire. The truce in Gaza appeared increasingly tenuous as the number of women and children held by the militants as bargaining chips dwindled after dozens were released.

    Word of the extension came just as the truce was to expire at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) Thursday. The Qatari Foreign Ministry said the truce was being extended under the same terms as in the past, with Hamas releasing 10 Israeli hostages per day in exchange for Israel’s release of 30 Palestinian prisoners.

    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 have killed thousands of Palestinians, uprooted three quarters of the population of 2.3 million and led to a humanitarian crisis.

    The war has stoked tensions across the region. On Thursday morning, two gunmen opened fire on people waiting for buses and rides where a main highway from Tel Aviv enters Jerusalem. Israel’s Maged David Adom emergency service said one person was killed and six people were wounded, one of them critically. Police said the two attackers were killed.

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel late Wednesday on his third trip to the region since the start of the war, and is expected to press for further extensions of the truce and the release of more hostages.

    The announcement followed a last-minute standoff, with Hamas saying Israel had rejected a proposed list that included seven living captives and the remains of three who the group said were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Israel later said Hamas submitted an improved list, paving the way for the extension.

    The talks appear to be growing tougher with most of the women and children taken hostage by Hamas during the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war already freed. The militants are expected to make greater demands in return for freeing men and soldiers.

    Israel says it will maintain the truce until Hamas stops releasing captives, at which point it will resume its offensive aimed at eliminating the group.

    Hamas is deeply rooted in Palestinian society and has ruled Gaza since 2007. So far, the Israeli onslaught in Gaza seems to have had little effect on the group’s rule, evidenced by its ability to conduct complex negotiations, enforce the truce among other armed groups, and orchestrate the release of hostages.

    Hamas leaders, including Yehya Sinwar, have likely relocated to southern Gaza.

    With Israeli troops holding much of northern Gaza, a ground invasion south — where most of Gaza’s population is now concentrated — will likely bring an escalating cost in Palestinian lives and destruction.

    The Biden administration has told Israel that if it launches an offensive in the south, it must operate with far greater precision.

    The plight of the captives and shock from Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel 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 of more releases.

    Since the initial truce began on Friday, both sides have been releasing only women and children. Israeli officials say Gaza militants still hold around 20 women, who would all be released in a few days if the swaps continue at the current rate.

    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.

    So far, most Palestinians released 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.

    An Israeli official involved in hostage negotiations said talks on a further extension for release of civilian males and soldiers were still preliminary, and that 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.

    Hamas kidnapped some 240 people during the attack on southern Israel that began the war, including babies, children, women, soldiers, older adults and Thai farm laborers. It killed over 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack, mostly civilians.

    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.

    For Palestinians in Gaza, the truce’s calm has been overwhelmed by the search for aid and by horror at the extent of destruction.

    In the north, residents described entire residential blocks as leveled 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.

    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 U.N.-run shelters house over 1 million displaced people, with many sleeping outside in cold, rainy weather.

    At a distribution center in Rafah, large crowds line up daily for bags of flour but supplies run out quickly.

    “Every day, we come here … we spend money on transportation to get here, just to go home with nothing,” said one woman in line, Nawal Abu Namous.

    ___

    Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed.

    ___

    Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

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  • Fragile cease-fire in Gaza is back on track after hourslong delay in 2nd hostage-for-prisoner swap

    Fragile cease-fire in Gaza is back on track after hourslong delay in 2nd hostage-for-prisoner swap

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    DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The tense cease-fire between Israel and Hamas appeared to be back on track early Sunday after the release of a second group of militant-held hostages and Palestinians from Israeli prisons, but the swap followed an hourslong delay that underscored the truce’s fragility.

    The exchange was delayed Saturday evening after Hamas accused Israel of violating the agreement, which has brought the first significant pause in seven weeks of war marked by the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian violence in decades, vast destruction and displacement across the Gaza Strip, and a hostage crisis that has shaken Israel.

    The deal seemed at risk of unraveling until Qatar and Egypt, which mediate with Hamas, announced late Saturday that the obstacles to the exchange had been overcome. The militants released 17 hostages, including 13 Israelis, while Israel freed 39 Palestinian prisoners.

    Thousands of people gathered in central Tel Aviv late Saturday to call for the release of all the estimated 240 people captured by Hamas in its Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel, which ignited the war. They accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not doing enough to bring them back.

    Pressure from the hostages’ families and lingering anger over Israel’s failure to prevent the attack have sharpened the dilemma facing the country’s leaders as they seek to eliminate Hamas as a military and governing power while bringing all the captives back safely.

    The war has already claimed the lives of more than 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians killed by Hamas in the initial attack. More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed, roughly two thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

    The four-day cease-fire, which began Friday, was brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States. Hamas is to release at least 50 Israeli hostages, and Israel 150 Palestinian prisoners. All are women and minors.

    Israel has said the truce can be extended by an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed, but has vowed to quickly resume its offensive once it ends. Israel said early Sunday that it had received a new list of hostages slated to be released later in the day, in the third of four scheduled swaps.

    The pause has given Gaza’s 2.3 million people, still reeling from relentless Israeli bombardment that has driven three-quarters of the population from their homes and leveled residential areas, a few days of calm. Rocket fire from Gaza militants into Israel also went silent.

    War-weary Palestinians in northern Gaza, where the offensive has focused, returned to the streets to survey the damage Entire city blocks in and around Gaza City have been gutted by airstrikes that hollowed out buildings and left drifts of rubble in the street.

    The United Nations said the truce has made it possible to scale up the delivery of food, water, and medicine to the largest volume since the start of the war. It was also able to deliver 129,000 liters (about 35,000 gallons) of fuel, just over 10% of daily pre-war volume, as well as cooking gas, a first since the war began.

    Aid also reached northern Gaza, for the first time in a month. The Palestinian Red Crescent said 61 trucks carrying food, water and medical supplies headed there on Saturday. The U.N. said it and the Palestinian Red Crescent were also able to evacuate 40 patients and family members from a hospital in Gaza City to another one in the south.

    In holding up the hostage release on Saturday, Hamas alleged that aid deliveries fell short of what was expected and that not enough was reaching the north. It also said Israel was not releasing enough long-serving prisoners. Many Palestinians view prisoners held by Israel, including those implicated in deadly attacks, as heroes resisting occupation.

    Shortly before midnight, Hamas released the second group of hostages, 13 Israelis and four Thais. They were turned over to Egypt and then transferred to Israel, where they were taken to hospitals.

    Hamas released a video showing the hostages appearing shaken but mostly in good physical condition as masked militants led them to Red Cross vehicles headed out of Gaza. Some of the hostages waved goodbye to the militants. One girl was on crutches and wore a cast on her left foot.

    The Israeli hostages freed on Saturday included seven children and six women, Netanyahu’s office announced. Most were from Kibbutz Be’eri, a community Hamas militants ravaged during their Oct. 7 cross-border attack. The children ranged in age from 3 to 16, and the women ranged from 18 to 67.

    It was a bittersweet moment for the residents of Be’eri, who have been living in a Dead Sea hotel since their community was overrun. A kibbutz spokesperson said all the released hostages either had a family member killed in the Oct. 7 rampage or a loved one still in captivity in Gaza.

    Some of the Palestinian prisoners were released in east Jerusalem, while the bulk returned home to a hero’s welcome in the occupied West Bank.

    Among those released was Nurhan Awad, who was 17 in 2016 when she was sentenced to 13 1/2 years in jail for attempting to stab an Israeli soldier with a pair of scissors.

    In Jerusalem, Israeli troops drove away journalists who gathered outside the home of Israa Jaabis, who had been imprisoned since 2015 after being convicted of carrying out a bombing attack that wounded an Israeli police officer and left Jaabis with severe burns on her face and hands.

    Jaabis later told reporters that she was “ashamed to be happy at a time when Palestine is injured.”

    In the West Bank town of Al-Bireh, newly released teenage boys were paraded through the main square where they waved Palestinian flags as well as green banners of Hamas and yellow banners of the Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas.

    According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, Israel is holding 7,200 Palestinians, including about 2,000 arrested since the start of the war.

    ___

    Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed.

    ___

    Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

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  • The Israeli military says the freed hostages have returned to Israel

    The Israeli military says the freed hostages have returned to Israel

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    The Israeli military says the freed hostages have returned to Israel

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