Hamas prepares response to Gaza truce offer

A man carries a child as he walks with other people fleeing following Israeli bombardment in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (File/AFP)
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Updated 30 April 2024
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Hamas prepares response to Gaza truce offer

  • Returning to Qatar after the latest talks in Cairo, the Hamas delegation said it would “discuss the ideas and the proposal”

JERUSALEM: Hamas was studying Tuesday Israel’s offer of a 40-day truce in the war in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of scores of hostages held since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attacks.
Returning to Qatar after the latest talks in Cairo, the Hamas delegation said it would “discuss the ideas and the proposal... we are keen to respond as quickly as possible,” a Hamas source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Egyptian sources told Al-Qahera News, a site linked to Egyptian intelligence services, that the Hamas delegation would “return with a written response.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the truce terms as “extraordinarily generous,” while the White House asked fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to increase pressure on Hamas to accept the latest push to halt the nearly seven-month-old war.
According to Monday night call readouts, US President Joe Biden urged the Egyptian and Qatari leaders “to exert all efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas,” calling this “the only obstacle” to securing relief for civilians in the besieged strip.
For months, Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to secure a new agreement between the combatants. A one-week truce in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Relentless Israeli bombardment has meanwhile devastated Hamas-run Gaza, flattening much of the territory and bringing its people to the brink of famine, while threatening to unfurl into a wider regional conflict.
In the far southern city of Rafah, Palestinians despaired over the war while searching for victims of the latest strike.
“Civilian individuals with no ties to Hamas or any other group were struck by a rocket, torn apart,” Um Louay Masri said at a destroyed building where children were being pulled out from underneath the rubble. “Why did this occur?“
To global alarm, Israel has vowed to go after Hamas battalions in Rafah, where the majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have sought refuge.
But Foreign Minister Israel Katz said over the weekend the government may “suspend” that operation if a truce is reached.

Blinken’s Mideast tour
Speaking in Riyadh on his seventh visit to the region since the start of the war in Gaza, top US diplomat Blinken underscored the need for Hamas to “decide quickly” on the truce.
He told a World Economic Forum special meeting that he was “hopeful that they will make the right decision.”
At the WEF meeting, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said “the proposal has taken into account the positions of both sides.”
“We are hopeful,” he added.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that Hamas has been offered a “sustained 40 days’ ceasefire, the release of potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners, in return for the release of these hostages.”
On the sidelines of the WEF, US, European and Arab representatives met to discuss how to advance a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told the gathering that tangible and irreversible steps toward establishing a Palestinian state would be an essential component of any durable ceasefire deal.
To incentivise Israel to support a Palestinian state, Washington has pushed the prospect of normalized Israel-Saudi relations, with Blinken suggesting Monday that some progress was being made in that arena.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a long-standing opponent of Palestinian statehood however, and Israel has previously rejected a permanent ceasefire.
A Hamas source has told AFP the group is keen for a deal that “guarantees a permanent ceasefire, the free return of displaced people, an acceptable deal for (a prisoner-hostage) exchange and an end to the siege” in Gaza.

Mounting pressure
Netanyahu is under tremendous pressure from the families of hostages taken by Hamas in the October 7 attack to secure their release.
On Monday, the families of two Israeli captives seen alive in a video released by Hamas last weekend called for their release.
“I demand the leaders of the free world to help us bring our people home,” said Aviva Siegel, who was freed in the November truce and is the wife of captive Keith Siegel.
Israel estimates 129 hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 believed to be dead.
Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,488 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
That tally includes at least 34 deaths in a 24-hour window, the ministry said Monday, down from a peak this month of at least 153 deaths on April 9.
At Rafah’s Al-Najjar hospital, a crowd of grief-stricken relatives jostled over the dead, shrouded in white.
“We demand the entire world to call for a lasting truce,” Abu Taha said at the hospital.

Access of aid
After an Israeli drone strike in early April killed seven workers from a US-based charity, Biden suggested to Netanyahu, for the first time, that continued US support could be conditional on protection and aid for civilians.
On Sunday, the White House said Israel was letting more aid trucks into Gaza in line with “commitments” Biden asked it to meet.
The UN has, however, continued to cite “access constraints” that significantly hinder delivery.
The US military is building a pier to help boost humanitarian supplies — an effort that the Pentagon on Monday said would cost Washington at least $320 million.
The UN has warned a heatwave and the proliferation of insects are increasing the risk for diseases at the swelling tent cities in Gaza.
“I have sick children who cannot tolerate the heat,” said Alaa Al-Saleh, a Palestinian displaced to an encampment in Rafah. “We are cramped inside the tent, rarely going outside.”


Daesh attack in Syria kills three soldiers: war monitor

Updated 8 sec ago
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Daesh attack in Syria kills three soldiers: war monitor

The militants “attacked a site where... regime forces were stationed“
The Syrian army had sent forces to the area, where Daesh attacks are common

BEIRUT: Daesh group militants killed three Syrian soldiers in an attack Tuesday on an army position in the Badia desert, a war monitor said.
The militants “attacked a site where... regime forces were stationed,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Right said, adding that a lieutenant colonel and two soldiers died.
The Syrian army had sent forces to the area, where Daesh attacks are common, ahead of an expected wider sweep, said the Britain-based Observatory which has a network of sources inside the country.
In an attack on May 3, Daesh fighters killed at least 15 Syrian pro-government fighters when they targeted three military positions in the desert, the Observatory had reported.
Daesh overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a so-called caliphate and launching a reign of terror.
It was defeated territorially in Syria in 2019, but its remnants still carry out deadly attacks, particularly against pro-government forces and Kurdish-led fighters in Badia desert.
Syria’s war has claimed more than half a million lives and displaced millions more since it erupted in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.

At least 6 Egyptian women die after vehicle slides off ferry and plunges into Nile River

Updated 21 May 2024
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At least 6 Egyptian women die after vehicle slides off ferry and plunges into Nile River

  • The accident, which happened in Monshat el-Kanater town in Giza province, also injured nine other passengers

CAIRO: At least six Egyptian women died Tuesday after a vehicle carrying about two dozen people slid off a ferry and plunged into the Nile River just outside Cairo, authorities said.
The accident, which happened in Monshat el-Kanater town in Giza province, also injured nine other passengers, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Giza is one of three provinces forming Greater Cairo.
The ministry said six of the injured were treated at the site while three others were transferred to hospitals. It didn’t elaborate on their injuries.
Giza provincial Gov. Ahmed Rashed said the microbus was retrieved from the Nile, and rescue efforts were still underway as of midday Tuesday.
The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.
According to the state-owned Akhbar daily, about two dozen passengers, mostly women, were in the vehicle heading to work when the accident occurred.
Ferry, railway and road accidents are common in Egypt mainly because of poor maintenance and lack of regulations. In February, a ferry carrying day laborers sank in the Nile in Giza, killing at least 10 of the 15 people on board.


Syrian first lady Asma Assad has leukemia, presidency says

Updated 21 May 2024
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Syrian first lady Asma Assad has leukemia, presidency says

  • Statement stated that Asma would undergo a special treatment protocol that would require her to isolate

DUBAI: Syria’s first lady, Asma Assad, has been diagnosed with leukemia, the Syrian presidency said on Tuesday, almost five years after she announced she had fully recovered from breast cancer.
The statement said Asma, 48, would undergo a special treatment protocol that would require her to isolate, and that she would step away from public engagements as a result.
In August 2019, Asma said she had fully recovered from breast cancer that she said had been discovered early.
Since Syria plunged into war in 2011, the British-born former investment banker has taken on the public role of leading charity efforts and meeting families of killed soldiers, but has also become hated by the opposition.
She runs the Syria Trust for Development, a large NGO that acts as an umbrella organization for many of the aid and development operations in Syria.
Last year, she accompanied her husband, President Bashar Assad ,on a visit to the United Arab Emirates, her first known official trip abroad with him since 2011. She met Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, the Emirati president’s mother, during a trip seen as a public signal of her growing role in public affairs.


Yemen’s Houthis say they downed US drone over Al-Bayda province

Updated 21 May 2024
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Yemen’s Houthis say they downed US drone over Al-Bayda province

  • The Houthis said last Friday they downed another US MQ9 drone over the southeastern province of Maareb

DUBAI: Yemen’s Houthis downed a US MQ9 drone over Al-Bayda province in southern Yemen, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson said in a televised statement on Tuesday.

Yahya Saree said the drone was targeted with a locally made surface-to-air missile and that videos to support the claim would be released.

The Houthis said last Friday they downed another US MQ9 drone over the southeastern province of Maareb.

The group, which controls Yemen’s capital and most populous areas of the Arabian Peninsula state, has attacked international shipping in the Red Sea since November in solidarity with the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas militants, drawing US and British retaliatory strikes since February.


Iranians pay last respects to President Ebrahim Raisi

People mourn the death of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a helicopter crash.
Updated 6 min 4 sec ago
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Iranians pay last respects to President Ebrahim Raisi

  • Mourners set off from a central square in the northwestern city of Tabriz
  • Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declares five days of national mourning

TEHRAN: Tens of thousands of Iranians gathered Tuesday to mourn president Ebrahim Raisi and seven members of his entourage who were killed in a helicopter crash on a fog-shrouded mountainside in the northwest.

Waving Iranian flags and portraits of the late president, mourners set off from a central square in the northwestern city of Tabriz, where Raisi was headed when his helicopter crashed on Sunday.

They walked behind a lorry carrying the coffins of Raisi and his seven aides.

Their helicopter lost communications while it was on its way back to Tabriz after Raisi attended the inauguration of a joint dam project on the Aras river, which forms part of the border with Azerbaijan, in a ceremony with his counterpart Ilham Aliyev.

A massive search and rescue operation was launched on Sunday when two other helicopters flying alongside Raisi’s lost contact with his aircraft in bad weather.

State television announced his death in a report early on Monday, saying “the servant of the Iranian nation, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, has achieved the highest level of martyrdom,” showing pictures of him as a voice recited the Qur’an.

Killed alongside the Iranian president were Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, provincial officials and members of his security team.

Iran’s armed forces chief of staff Mohammad Bagheri ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash as Iranians in cities nationwide gathered to mourn Raisi and his entourage.

Tens of thousands gathered in the capital’s Valiasr Square on Monday.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate authority in Iran, declared five days of national mourning and assigned vice president Mohammad Mokhber, 68, as caretaker president until a presidential election can be held.

State media later announced that the election would will be held on June 28.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri, who served as deputy to Amir-Abdollahian, was named acting foreign minister.

From Tabriz, Raisi’s body will be flown to the Shiite clerical center of Qom on Tuesday before being moved to Tehran that evening.

Processions will be held in in the capital on Wednesday morning before Khamenei leads prayers at a farewell ceremony.

Raisi’s body will then be flown to his home city of Mashhad, in the northeast, where he will be buried on Thursday evening after funeral rites.

Raisi, 63, had been in office since 2021. The ultra-conservative’s time in office saw mass protests, a deepening economic crisis and unprecedented armed exchanges with arch-enemy Israel.

Raisi succeeded the moderate Hassan Rouhani, at a time when the economy was battered by US sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear activities.

Condolence messages flooded in from Iran’s allies around the region, including the Syrian government, Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

It was an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the devastating war in Gaza, now in its eighth month, and soaring tensions between Israel and the “resistance axis” led by Iran.

Israel’s killing of seven Revolutionary Guards in a drone strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 triggered Iran’s first ever direct attack on Israel, involving hundreds of missiles and drones.

In a speech hours before his death, Raisi underlined Iran’s support for the Palestinians, a centerpiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Palestinian flags were raised alongside Iranian flags at ceremonies held for the late president.