US charges Hamas leader, other militants in connection with Oct. 7 rampage

US charges Hamas leader, other militants in connection with Oct. 7 rampage
Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the southern Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP)
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Updated 04 September 2024
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US charges Hamas leader, other militants in connection with Oct. 7 rampage

US charges Hamas leader, other militants in connection with Oct. 7 rampage
  • Sinwar was appointed the overall head of Hamas after the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran and sits atop Israel’s most-wanted list
  • Israel has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since war broke out in October last year, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry

WASHINGTON: The Justice Department announced criminal charges Tuesday against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other senior militants in connection with the Oct. 7, 2023, rampage in Israel, marking the first effort by American law enforcement to formally call out the masterminds of the attack.

The seven-count criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York City includes charges such as conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, conspiracy to murder US nationals and conspiracy to finance terrorism. It also accuses Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah of providing financial support, weapons, including rockets, and military supplies to Hamas for use in attacks.

The impact of the case may be mostly symbolic given that Sinwar is believed to be hiding in tunnels in Gaza and the Justice Department says three of the six defendants are believed now to be dead. But officials say additional actions are expected as part of a broader effort to target a militant group that the US designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 and that over the decades has been linked to a series of deadly attacks on Israel, including suicide bombings.

The complaint was originally filed under seal in February to give the US time to try to take into custody then-Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and other defendants, but it was unsealed Tuesday after Haniyeh’s death in July and other developments in the region lessened the need for secrecy, the Justice Department said.

“The charges unsealed today are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas’ operations,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a video statement. “These actions will not be our last.”

The charges come as the White House says it is developing a new ceasefire and hostage deal proposal with its Egyptian and Qatari counterparts to try to bring about an agreement between Israel and Hamas to end the nearly 11-month war in Gaza.

A US official, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press there was no reason to believe the charges would affect the ongoing negotiations.

National security spokesman John Kirby said the recent “executions” of six hostages, including one American, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, by Hamas underscore “the sense of urgency” in the talks.

“We are investigating Hersh’s murder, and each and every one of the brutal murders of Americans, as acts of terrorism,” Garland said in the statement. “We will continue to support the whole of government effort to bring the Americans still being held hostage home.”

Sinwar was appointed the overall head of Hamas after the killing of Haniyeh in Iran and sits atop Israel’s most-wanted list. He is believed to have spent most of the past 10 months living in tunnels under Gaza, and it is unclear how much contact he has with the outside world. He was a long-serving Palestinian prisoner freed in an exchange of the type that would be part of a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Haniyeh was also charged.

Other Hamas leaders facing charges include Marwan Issa, deputy leader of Hamas’ armed wing in Gaza, who helped plan last year’s attack and who Israel says was killed when its fighter jets struck an underground compound in central Gaza in March; Khaled Mashaal, another Haniyeh deputy and a former leader of the group thought to be based in Qatar; Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ longtime shadowy military leader who was thought to be killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza in July; and Lebanon-based Ali Baraka, Hamas’ head of external relations.

The charges are “yet another tool” for the US to respond to the threat Hamas poses to the US and its ally Israel, said Merissa Khurma, Middle East program director at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

“If Sinwar is found and brought to justice for planning the October 7 attacks, it would be a significant win for the US and for all those who lost loved ones,” she said by email.

However, with Sinwar in hiding, Khurma doesn’t see the charges adding more pressure on Hamas. She noted that the chief prosecutor of the world’s top war crimes court sought arrest warrants for Hamas leaders like Sinwar and it didn’t change their behavior or weaken them in the ceasefire negotiations.

She said the case was still important for the US because many of those killed or kidnapped were Americans and because the country doesn’t recognize the International Criminal Court.

During the Oct. 7 attacks, militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage. Roughly 100 hostages remain, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

The criminal complaint describes the massacre as the “most violent, large-scale terrorist attack” in Hamas’ history. It details how Hamas operatives who arrived in southern Israel with “trucks, motorcycles, bulldozers, speedboats, and paragliders” engaged in a brutal campaign of violence that included rape, genital mutilation and machine-gun shootings at close range.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction, forced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to flee their homes, often multiple times, and created a humanitarian catastrophe.

Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out months of negotiations by issuing new demands, including for lasting Israeli control over the Philadelphi corridor along the border of Egypt and a second corridor running across Gaza.

Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by President Joe Biden in July.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged “total victory” over Hamas and blames it for the failure of the negotiations.


Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill

Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill
Updated 15 July 2025
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Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill

Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill
  • Ultra-Orthodox parties have argued that a bill to exempt yeshiva students was a key promise in their agreement to join the coalition in late 2022

JERUSALEM: One of Israel's ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism, said it was quitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition due to a long-running dispute over failure to draft a bill to exempt yeshiva students from military service.

Six of the remaining seven members of UTJ, which is comprised of the Degel Hatorah and Agudat Yisrael factions, wrote letters of resignation. Yitzhak Goldknopf, chairman of UTJ, had resigned a month ago.

That would leave Netanyahu with a razor thin majority of 61 seats in the 120 seat Knesset, or parliament.

It was not clear whether Shas, another ultra-Orthodox party, would follow suit.

Degel Hatorah said in a statement that after conferring with its head rabbis, "and following repeated violations by the government to its commitments to ensure the status of holy yeshiva students who diligently engage in their studies ... (its MKs) have announced their resignation from the coalition and the government."

Ultra-Orthodox parties have argued that a bill to exempt yeshiva students was a key promise in their agreement to join the coalition in late 2022.

A spokesperson for Goldknopf confirmed that in all, seven UTJ Knesset members are leaving the government.

Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers have long threatened to leave the coalition over the conscription bill.

Some religious parties in Netanyahu's coalition are seeking exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students from military service that is mandatory in Israel, while other lawmakers want to scrap any such exemptions altogether.

The ultra-Orthodox have long been exempt from military service, which applies to most other young Israelis, but last year the Supreme Court ordered the defence ministry to end that practice and start conscripting seminary students.

Netanyahu had been pushing hard to resolve a deadlock in his coalition over a new military conscription bill, which has led to the present crisis.

The exemption, in place for decades and which over the years has spared an increasingly large number of people, has become a heated topic in Israel with the military still embroiled in a war in Gaza. 

 


More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say

More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say
Updated 15 July 2025
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More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say

More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say
  • As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May

BENGHAZI: More than 100 migrants, including five women, have been freed from captivity after being held for ransom by a gang in eastern Libya, the country’s attorney general said on Monday.

“A criminal group involved in organizing the smuggling of migrants, depriving them of their freedom, trafficking them, and torturing them to force their families to pay ransoms for their release,” a statement from the attorney general said.

Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via the dangerous route across the desert and over the Mediterranean following the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.

Many migrants desperate to make the crossing have fallen into the hands of traffickers. The freed migrants had been held in Ajdabiya, some 160 km (100 miles) from Libya’s second city Benghazi.

Five suspected traffickers from Libya, Sudan and Egypt, have been arrested, officials said.

The attorney general and Ajdabiya security directorate posted pictures of the migrants on their Facebook pages which they said had been retrieved from the suspects’ mobile phones.

They showed migrants with hands and legs cuffed with signs that they had been beaten.

In February, at least 28 bodies were recovered from a mass grave in the desert north of Kufra city. Officials said a gang had subjected the migrants to torture and inhumane treatment.

That followed another 19 bodies being found in a mass grave in the Jikharra area, also in southeastern Libya, a security directorate said, blaming a known smuggling network.

As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May.

Last week, the EU migration commissioner and ministers from Italy, Malta and Greece met with the internationally recognized prime minister of the national unity government, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and discussed the migration crisis. 

 


Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks

Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks
Updated 15 July 2025
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Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks

Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks
  • Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP
  • US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week”

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Stuttering Gaza ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with meditators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas, as more than 20 people were killed across the Palestinian territory.

The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of hostages and a 60-day ceasefire after 21 months of fighting.

An official with knowledge of the talks said they were “ongoing” in Doha on Monday, telling AFP: “Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza.”

“Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,” the source added on condition of anonymity.

Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who wants to see the Palestinian militant group destroyed — of being the main obstacle.

“Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,” the group wrote on Telegram.

In Gaza, the civil defense agency said at least 22 people were killed Monday in the latest Israeli strikes in and around Gaza City and in Khan Yunis in the south.

An Israeli military statement said troops had destroyed “buildings and terrorist infrastructure” used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza City’s Shujaiya and Zeitun areas.

The Al-Quds Brigades — the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas — released footage on Monday that it said showed its fighters firing missiles at an Israeli army command and control center near Shujaiya.

The military later on Monday said three soldiers — aged 19, 20 and 21 — “fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip” and died in hospital on Monday. Another from the same battalion was severely injured.

US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week.”

Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.

“Egyptian, Qatari and American mediators continue their efforts that make Israel present a modified withdrawal map that would be acceptable,” they added.

On Saturday, the same source said Hamas rejected Israeli proposals to keep troops in more than 40 percent of Gaza, as well as plans to move Palestinians into an enclave on the border with Egypt.

A senior Israeli political official countered by accusing Hamas of inflexibility and trying to deliberately scupper the talks by “clinging to positions that prevent the mediators from advancing an agreement.”

Netanyahu has said he would be ready to enter talks for a more lasting ceasefire once a deal for a temporary truce is agreed, but only when Hamas lays down its arms.

He is under pressure to wrap up the war, with military casualties rising and with public frustration mounting at both the continued captivity of the hostages taken on October 7 and a perceived lack of progress in the conflict.

Politically, Netanyahu’s fragile governing coalition is holding, for now, but he denies being beholden to a minority of far-right ministers in prolonging an increasingly unpopular conflict.

He also faces a backlash over the feasibility, cost and ethics of a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” from scratch in southern Gaza to house Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold.

Israel’s security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert have described as a “concentration camp.”

“If they (Palestinians) will be deported there into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing,” Olmert was quoted as saying by The Guardian newspaper late on Sunday.

Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

A total of 251 hostages were taken that day, of whom 49 are still being held, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s military reprisals have killed 58,386 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

 


Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor

Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor
Updated 15 July 2025
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Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor

Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor
  • Over 4 million refugees have fled Sudan’s more than two-year civil war to seven neighboring countries where shelter conditions are widely viewed as inadequate due to chronic funding shortages

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 48 civilians in an attack on a village in the center of the war-torn country, a monitoring group reported Monday.

The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the two-year conflict between the regular army and the RSF, reported civilians were killed en masse Sunday when paramilitary fighters stormed the village of Um Garfa in North Kordofan state, razing houses and looting property.

 

 


Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says

Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says
Updated 15 July 2025
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Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says

Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says
  • An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan

BAGHDAD: Two drones fell in the Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement on Monday.

Khurmala oilfield is located near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.

The Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information, said in a statement that no casualties were reported and only material damage was recorded.

An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan, it added.