JERUSALEM: Hamas vowed on Friday it would not release the hostages it seized during its October 7 attack on Israel until the Gaza war ends, as it mourned the death of its leader Yahya Sinwar.
The killing of Sinwar, the mastermind of the deadliest attack in Israeli history, had raised hopes of a turning point in the war, including for families of the Israeli hostages and Gazans enduring a dire humanitarian crisis.
However, as Qatar-based Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya mourned Sinwar in a video statement on Friday, he reiterated the group’s position that no hostages would be released “unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops.”
And Israeli forces pummelled Gaza with air strikes on Friday, with rescuers recovering the bodies of three Palestinian children from the rubble of their home in the north of the territory, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
“We always thought that when this moment arrived the war would end and our lives would return to normal,” Jemaa Abou Mendi, a 21-year-old Gaza resident, told AFP.
“But unfortunately, the reality on the ground is quite the opposite. The war has not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”
Sinwar was Israel’s most wanted man and his death — announced by the Israeli military on Thursday — deals a major blow to the already weakened group.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Sinwar’s killing an “important landmark in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas.”
He added that while it did not spell the end of the war, it was “the beginning of the end.”
After Sinwar’s killing was announced, some hailed the news as a sign of better things to come.
US President Joe Biden, whose government is Israel’s top arms provider, said Sinwar’s death was “an opportunity to seek a path to peace, a better future in Gaza without Hamas.”
Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged Israel’s government and international mediators to leverage “this major achievement to secure hostages’ return.”
“Now that Sinwar is not a formal obstacle in the way of the release of the hostages, it is unacceptable that they would stay in captivity even one more day,” said Ayala Metzger, daughter-in-law of killed hostage Yoram Metzger.
But she added: “We (are) afraid that Netanyahu does not intend on stopping the war, nor does he intend to bring the hostages back.”
After Sinwar’s death, Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi vowed to keep fighting “until we capture all the terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre and bring all the hostages home.”
Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said that “our fight will not stop until Palestine is liberated.”
Hamas sparked the war in Gaza by staging the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
During the attack, militants took 251 hostages back into Gaza. Ninety-seven remain there, including 34 who Israeli officials say are dead.
Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas and bring back the hostages has killed 42,500 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the UN considers reliable.
A “conservative” estimate puts the death toll among children in Gaza at over 14,100, said James Elder, spokesman of the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF.
“Gaza is the real-world embodiment of hell on Earth for its one million children,” Elder said on Friday. “And it’s getting worse, day by day.”
Criticism has been mounting over the civilian toll and lack of food and humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, where the UN has warned of famine.
Sinwar was the head of Hamas in Gaza at the time of the October 7 attack, rising to become the group’s overall leader after the killing of its political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in July.
The Israeli military said Sinwar was killed in a firefight in southern Gaza’s Rafah, near the Egyptian border, while being tracked by a drone.
It released drone footage of what it said was Sinwar’s final moments, with the video showing a wounded militant throwing an object at the drone.
It is unclear whether his successor will be named in Qatar, where Hamas’s political leadership has long been based, or in Gaza, the focus of the fighting.
Sinwar’s death created “a leadership vacuum,” Middle East analyst Andreas Krieg of King’s College London said.
Krieg said that next leader was likely to be someone from the operational level of Hamas. But among those on the battlefield, Sinwar’s younger brother Mohammed Sinwar has emerged as a favorite, he added.
Israel is also fighting a war in Lebanon, where Hamas ally Hezbollah opened a front by launching cross-border strikes that forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes.
Israel ramped up its bombardment on September 23 and by the end of the month sent ground troops across the Lebanese border.
On Friday, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon warned that the escalating war “is causing widespread destruction of towns and villages in south Lebanon.”
The UNIFIL mission has accused Israeli troops of firing at its positions in south Lebanon, which Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni branded as “unacceptable” on Friday.
The war since late September has left at least 1,418 people dead in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.
The war has also drawn in other Iran-aligned armed groups, including in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
Iran on October 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel, for which Israel has vowed to retaliate.
Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels all mourned the death of Sinwar, vowing continued support for their Palestinian ally Hamas.
Hamas mourns Sinwar, vows no hostage release until war ends
https://arab.news/bs33u
Hamas mourns Sinwar, vows no hostage release until war ends
- No hostages would be released “unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops“
- “We always thought that when this moment arrived the war would end and our lives would return to normal,” Jemaa Abou Mendi, a 21-year-old Gaza resident, told AFP
‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town
TAWILA: Crouching over a small wood-scrap fire in Sudan’s war-battered Darfur region, Aziza Ismail Idris stirs a pot of watery porridge — the only food her family have had for days.
“No organization has come. No water, no food — not even a biscuit for the children,” Idris told AFP, her voice brittle with fatigue.
Having fled a brutal paramilitary attack last month on Zamzam, once one of Sudan’s largest displacement camps, she and her five children are among the estimated 300,000 people who have since arrived in the small farming town of Tawila, according to the United Nations.
“We arrived here barefoot with nothing,” she said, recalling her escape from Zamzam camp, about a 60-kilometer (37-mile) desert trek away, also in the vast western region of Darfur.
The few aid organizations on the ground lack the means to meet the urgent needs of so many displaced people.
“Humanitarian organizations were simply not prepared to receive this scale of displacement,” said Thibault Fendler, who works with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Tawila.
Since war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and rival paramilitaries, the town has received waves of displaced people fleeing violence elsewhere.
“We are working to scale up our capacities, but the needs are simply enormous,” Fendler told AFP.
Tawila, nestled between mountains and seasonal farmland, was once a quiet rural outpost.
But the two-year war pitting the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has buffeted the already-scarred Darfur region.
Entire displacement camps have been besieged and razed, while the armed group that controls the area around Tawila — a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdelwahid Al-Nur — has vowed to protect those fleeing the violence.
The town’s schools, mosques and markets are crammed with people sleeping side by side, on concrete floors, under trees or in huts of straw and plastic, exposed to temperatures that can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Beyond the town center, a patchwork of makeshift shelters fans out across the horizon.
Inside, families keep what little they managed to bring with them: worn bags, cooking pots or clothes folded carefully on mats laid over dry earth.
Some weary children play silently in the dirt — many malnourished, some dressed in oversized hand-me-downs, others in the clothes they had fled in.
Nearby, dozens of women line up with empty jerrycans, waiting by a lone water tank.
More queues snake around soup kitchens, with women carrying pots in hand and children on their hips, hoping to get a meal before they run out.
“When we arrived, the thirst had nearly killed us, we had nothing,” said Hawaa Hassan Mohamed, a mother who fled from North Darfur’s besieged state capital of El-Fasher.
“People shared what little they had,” she told AFP.
The war has created the world’s largest hunger crisis, with famine already declared in several parts of North Darfur state where the UN estimates that more than a million people are on the brink of starvation.
The RSF and the army continue to battle for control of territory, particularly in and around El-Fasher — the last army stronghold in Darfur — crippling humanitarian access.
“It takes a long time to get aid here. The roads are full of checkpoints. Some are completely cut off,” Noah Taylor, head of operations for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP from Tawila.
“There are so many gaps in every sector, from food to shelter to sanitation. The financial and in-kind resources we have are simply not sufficient,” he said.
Organizations are scrambling to get food, clean water and health assistance to desperate families, but Taylor said these efforts are just scratching the surface.
“We are not there yet in terms of what people need,” he said.
“We’re doing what we can, but the global response has not kept pace with the scale of this disaster.”
Leni Kinzli, head of communications at the World Food Programme, said that a one-time delivery of “1,600 metric tons of food and nutrition supplies” for 335,000 people had reached Tawila last month.
But it took two weeks to reach the town, navigating multiple checkpoints and unsafe roads, she told AFP.
Aid workers warn that without urgent funding and secure access, these deliveries will even be harder, especially with the rainy season approaching.
Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital
- Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries
- Residents urged to stay indoors
TRIPOLI: Violent clashes between rival armed groups erupted Monday night in the Libyan capital Tripoli, prompting the interior ministry to urge residents to stay indoors.
Heavy arms fire and explosions were heard in several areas of the capital from 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT), AFP journalists in the city said.
Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries.
The interior ministry of the national unity government in Tripoli in a statement urged “all citizens to stay at home for their safety.”
Local media said clashes broke out in the southern suburbs between armed groups from Tripoli and rivals from Misrata, a major port city 200 km (125 miles) east of the capital.
Libya is struggling to recover from years of unrest following a 2011 revolt that led to the fall of the late dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
It is currently divided between a UN-recognized government in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, controlled by the Haftar family.
Despite relative calm in recent years, clashes periodically break out between armed groups vying for territory.
In August 2023, fighting between two powerful armed groups in Tripoli left 55 dead.
Several districts of the capital and its suburbs announced that schools would be closed on Tuesday until further notice.
Earlier Monday, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya and the United States Embassy in Tripoli called for calm.
They urged “all parties to de-escalate” and “refrain from any provocation, to resolve disputes through dialogue.”
Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says
RAMALLAH: An Israeli rights group has denounced a government decision to launch extensive land registration for parts of the occupied West Bank, saying it could help advance annexation of the Palestinian territory.
“It is a tool for annexation,” said Yonatan Mizrachi of the Settlement Watch project at Israeli nongovernmental organization Peace Now.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has no comprehensive land registry, with some areas unregistered or residents holding deeds from before the Israeli occupation.
The Israeli security Cabinet on Sunday decided to initiate a land registration process in the West Bank’s Area C, which covers more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control.
Though the process would likely take “years” according to Mizrachi, he said that Palestinians in Area C could lose land if Israeli authorities do not accept their claim to it.
This might lead to “a massive land theft,” Peace Now said, adding that the process could result “in the transfer of ownership of the vast majority of Area C to the (Israeli) state.”
“The Palestinians will have no practical way to realize their ownership rights,” the anti-settlement group said.
Some Israeli ministers have advocated the annexation of the West Bank, home to around 3 million Palestinians as well as some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who lives in a settlement, has said that 2025 would be the year Israel extends its sovereignty over parts of the West Bank.
To Mizrachi, the government’s decision was primarily “about ... the places where they want to expand settlements,” including in areas considered state land.
He mentioned remarks by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who praised the move in the official statement announcing it.
Katz said that launching land registration “is a revolutionary decision that brings justice to Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name that the Israeli government uses to refer to the West Bank.
The process will lead to the “strengthening, establishment and expansion” of settlements, Katz was quoted as saying.
He also said it would block “attempts to seize land” by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank but not Area C.
Mohammed Abu Al-Rob, director of the Palestinian Authority’s communication center, said that the decision was “a dangerous escalation of Israel’s illegal policies aimed at entrenching its occupation and advancing de facto annexation.”
Area C is “an inseparable part” of the rest of the Palestinian territories, he said.
Abu Al-Rob called on the international community to “reject this unlawful decision and to take immediate, concrete action to thwart its implementation.”
Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state
- Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani emphasizes that ‘our goal is not dominance but unification’
ANKARA: Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani has warned that postponing the implementation of an agreement between Syria’s new administration and Kurdish-led forces in the northeast would “prolong the chaos” in the country.
His remarks came as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced it was disbanding, an announcement the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control swaths of north and northeast Syria, have not yet commented on.
The PKK’s move is “a pivotal moment” for regional stability, Al-Shaibani told a news conference in Ankara with his Turkish and Jordanian counterparts.
Syria is “implementing the national accord with the Syrian Democratic Forces and incorporating all areas under central state control,” he said.
In March, Syria’s President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement to integrate the civil and military institutions of the autonomous Kurdish administration in the northeast into the national government.
The deal, agreed three months after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, is expected to be implemented by the end of the year.
“This process is complicated and sensitive, but it is necessary,” Al-Shaibani said, adding that “delaying the implementation of this agreement will prolong the chaos, open the door to foreign interference, and fuel separatist tendencies.”
“Our goal is not dominance but unification,” he said.
“We are keen on implementing this agreement, and we hope that the other side is seriously committed to implementing this agreement,” he added.
The SDF, the Kurdish administration’s de facto army, controls most of the oil and gas fields in Syria. The force maintains that it is independent from the PKK, but it is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Ankara views as a PKK offshoot.
After years of marginalization and repression under the Assad dynasty, the Kurds took advantage of the government forces’ withdrawal during the civil war, which erupted in 2011, to establish a semi-autonomous administration.
With US backing, the SDF played a key role in the fight against Daesh, which was defeated in its last Syrian territorial stronghold in 2019.
Al-Shaibani emphasized that “the unity of Syrian territory is non-negotiable, as Syria is an indivisible, unified state, sovereign over its land and will remain so.”
“The rights of Kurdish citizens will be preserved and guaranteed on an equal footing with the rest of the Syrian people,” he added.
Syria’s Kurds have criticized a temporary constitutional declaration announced in March and said the new government failed to reflect the country’s diversity.
In February, Abdi said an initial call for the PKK to lay down weapons and disband did not concern his forces.
Jordanian and Saudi army chiefs reaffirm military partnership
- Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of efforts to enhance regional security, says Jordanian commander
- His counterpart from the Kingdom reaffirms Riyadh’s commitment to tackling regional threats
LONDON: During talks on Monday, Maj. Gen. Yousef Ahmed Al-Hunaiti, chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Jordanian Armed Forces, and his Saudi counterpart, Gen. Fayyadh Al-Ruwaili, discussed military cooperation between their countries.
They considered ways in which cooperation might be enhanced and expertise shared, and addressed the development of strategic defense partnerships and coordinated efforts to tackle regional and international security challenges.
Al-Hunaiti reaffirmed the strong ties between the nations’ armed forces, and said that Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of efforts to enhance regional security, the Jordan News Agency reported.
Al-Ruwaili praised collaborative efforts to strengthen defense and security initiatives, and reaffirmed Riyadh’s commitment to tackling regional threats.
They were joined during their meeting at the Saudi Armed Forces headquarters in Riyadh by several senior officers from both countries.
