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Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages

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People gather around a vehicle of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Saraya Square in Gaza City on Jan. 19. The Israeli military said the Red Cross had confirmed the handover of three hostages. (AFP)
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A resident waves the Palestinian flag as displaced Palestinians return to Rafah on Jan. 19, 2025. (AP)
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Two women smile as they ride in a car along a street in Gaza City on Jan. 19, 2025. (AFP)
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Men ride in a car adorned with a Palestinian flag along a street in Gaza City on Jan. 19, 2025. (AFP)
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Displaced Palestinians have started to return to Rafah on Jan. 19, 2025 amid a delay in the long-awaited ceasefire in the conflict. (AFP)
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Updated 19 January 2025
Reuters
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Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages

  • Palestinians rush to see what remained of their homes after ceasefire takes hold
  • Three Israeli women hostages handed over to Israel by Hamas via the Red Cross
Updated 19 January 2025
Reuters

GAZA/CAIRO/JERUSALEM: Palestinians burst into the streets to celebrate and return to the rubble of their bombed-out homes on Sunday, and Hamas released the first three hostages under a ceasefire deal that halted fighting in Gaza.
Armed Hamas fighters drove through the southern city of Khan Younis with crowds cheering and chanting. In the north of the territory, bombed into oblivion in the war’s most intense fighting, people picked their way on narrow roads through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal.
“I feel like at last I found some water to drink after being lost in the desert for 15 months,” Aya, a displaced woman from Gaza City who has been sheltering in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip for over a year, said after the fighting stopped. “I feel alive again.”
In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Israelis in a square outside the defense headquarters watched the hostage release on a giant screen. The crowd cheered, embraced and wept as three female hostages could be seen exiting a vehicle in Gaza surrounded by armed Hamas men.
The hostages got into vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross as the crowd of fighters chanted the name of the armed wing of Hamas.
Soon after, the Israeli military said the hostages, identified by the prime minister’s office as Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari, had reached Israeli territory. An Israeli official told Reuters the Red Cross said they were in good health.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, buses were awaiting the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention. Hamas said the first group to be freed in exchange for the hostages includes 69 women and 21 teenage boys.
The first phase of the truce in the 15-month-old war between Israel and Hamas took effect following a three-hour delay during which Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip.
That last-minute Israeli blitz killed 13 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. Israel blamed Hamas for being late to deliver the names of hostages it would free, and said it had struck terrorists. Hamas said the holdup in providing the list was a technical glitch.
“Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent,” said US President Joe Biden, who welcomed on his last full day in office a truce that had eluded US diplomacy for more than a year.
The truce calls for fighting to stop, aid to be sent in to Gaza and 33 of the 98 Israeli and foreign hostages still held there to go free over the six-week first phase in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
For Hamas, the truce could provide an opportunity to emerge from the shadows after 15 months in hiding. Hamas policemen dressed in blue police uniform swiftly deployed in some areas.
People who had gathered to cheer the fighters chanted “Greetings to Al-Qassam Brigades” — the group’s armed wing.
“All the resistance factions are staying in spite of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu,” one fighter told Reuters. “This is a ceasefire, a full and comprehensive one God willing, and there will be no return to war in spite of him.”
The ceasefire agreement follows months of on-off negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, and comes into effect on the eve of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who had said there would be “hell to pay” unless hostages were freed before he took office.

TRUMP AIDE: HAMAS WILL NEVER GOVERN GAZA’
There is no detailed plan in place to govern Gaza after the war, much less rebuild it. Any return of Hamas to control in Gaza will test the commitment to the truce of Israel, which has said it will resume the war unless the militant group which has run the enclave since 2007 is fully dismantled.
Hard-line National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir quit the cabinet on Sunday over the ceasefire, though his party said it would not try to bring down Netanyahu’s government. The other most prominent hard-liner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, remained in the government for now but said he would quit if the war ends without Hamas completely destroyed.
Trump’s national security adviser-designate, Mike Waltz, said that if Hamas reneges on the agreement, the United States will support Israel “in doing what it has to do.”
“Hamas will never govern Gaza. That is completely unacceptable.”
The streets in shattered Gaza City in the north of the territory were already busy with groups of people waving the Palestinian flag and filming the scenes on their mobile phones. Several carts loaded with household possessions traveled down a thoroughfare scattered with rubble and debris.
Gaza City resident Ahmed Abu Ayham, 40, sheltering with his family in Khan Younis, said that while the ceasefire may have spared lives, the loss of lives and scale of destruction made it no time for celebrations.
“We are in pain, deep pain and it is time to hug one another and cry,” he said.
Long lines of trucks carrying fuel and aid supplies queued up at border crossings in the hours before the ceasefire was due to take effect. The World Food Programme said they began to cross on Sunday morning.
The deal requires 600 truckloads of aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the initial six-week ceasefire, including 50 carrying fuel. Half of the 600 aid trucks would be delivered to Gaza’s north, where experts have warned famine is imminent.
The war between Israel and Hamas began after the militants stormed Israeli towns and villages on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 47,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks that reduced the Gaza strip to a wasteland, according to medical officials in the enclave. Nearly the entire 2.3 million population of the enclave is homeless. Around 400 Israeli soldiers have also died.

Topics: War on Gaza Gaza Israel Hamas

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Battle for Khartoum wrecks key Sudan oil refinery

Updated 4 sec ago
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Battle for Khartoum wrecks key Sudan oil refinery

Updated 4 sec ago
Al-Jaili refinery, some 70 kilometers north of Khartoum, was captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces
“Some units have been completely destroyed and are now out of service,” the refinery’s deputy director, Sirajuddin Muhammad, told AFP

AL-JAILI, Sudan: The once-pristine white oil tanks of Sudan’s largest refinery have been blackened by nearly two years of devastating war, leaving the country heavily dependent on fuel imports it can ill afford.
The Chinese-built Al-Jaili refinery, some 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of Khartoum, was captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), just days after fighting with the regular army erupted in April 2023.
For months, artillery exchanges battered the facility, forcing a complete shutdown in July 2023.
The regular army finally recaptured the refinery in January as part of a wider offensive to retake greater Khartoum but operations remain at a standstill, with vast sections of the plant lying in ruins.
Towering storage tanks, which once gleamed under the sun, are now cloaked in soot and the ground is littered with twisted pipes and pools of leaked oil.
“Some units have been completely destroyed and are now out of service,” the refinery’s deputy director, Sirajuddin Muhammad, told AFP. “Other sections need to be entirely replaced.”
Before the war, Al-Jaili processed up to 100,000 barrels per day of crude, meeting nearly half of Sudan’s fuel needs.
“The refinery was crucial for Sudan, covering 50 percent of the country’s petrol needs, 40 percent of its diesel and 50 percent of its cooking gas,” economist Khalid el-Tigani told AFP.
“With its closure, Sudan has been forced to rely on imports to fill the gap, with fuel now being brought in by the private sector using foreign currency.”
And hard currency is in desperately short supply in Sudan after the deepening conflict between Sudan’s rival generals uprooted more than 12 million people, devastating the nation’s economy.
The Sudanese pound now trades at around 2,400 to the dollar, compared to 600 before the war, leaving imported goods beyond the means of most people.
During the army’s recapture of the refinery in January, what remained of it was gutted by a massive fire.
The RSF blamed the blaze on “barrel bombs” dropped by the air force.
The regular army accused the RSF of deliberately torching it in a “desperate attempt to destroy the country’s infrastructure.”
An AFP team visited the refinery under military escort on Tuesday. Burnt out vehicles lined the roadside as the convoy passed through abandoned neighborhoods.
As the refinery grew nearer, the blackened skeletons of storage tanks loomed in the distance and the acrid smell of burnt oil grew stronger.
The control rooms, where engineers once monitored operations, had been completely gutted.
Pools of water left over from the firefighting effort in January had yet to drain away.
Built in two phases, in 2000 and 2006, the plant cost $2.7 billion to build, with China taking the lead role.
Beijing still retains a 10 percent stake, while the Sudanese state controls the remaining 90 percent.
Refinery officials estimate it will cost at least $1.3 billion to get the refinery working again.
“Some parts must be manufactured in their country of origin, which determines the timeline of repairs,” Muhammad said.
An engineer at the refinery, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that even if Sudan secured the necessary financing, “it would still take at least three years to get this place running again.”
The discovery of large domestic oil reserves in the 1970s and 1980s transformed the Sudanese economy.
But when South Sudan seceded in 2011, the fledgling nation took with it about three-quarters of the formerly united country’s oil output.
South Sudan remains dependent on Sudanese pipelines to export its oil, paying transit fees to the rump country that are one of its few remaining sources of hard currency.
But the war has put that arrangement at risk.
In February last year, the pipeline used to export South Sudanese oil through Port Sudan on the country’s Red Sea coast was knocked out by fighting between the army and the RSF.
Exports were halted for nearly a year, resuming only in January.

German foreign minister on Syria visit reopens Damascus embassy

Updated 17 min 6 sec ago
AFP
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German foreign minister on Syria visit reopens Damascus embassy

  • Baerbock reopened the mission on her second visit there since the fall of president Bashar Assad over three months ago
  • “The horrific outbreaks of violence two weeks ago have caused a massive loss of trust,” said Baerbock
Updated 17 min 6 sec ago
AFP

DAMASCUS: Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock officially reopened her country’s embassy in war-ravaged Syrian Arab Republic during a one-day visit to Damascus on Thursday.
Baerbock reopened the mission, which closed in 2012 amid the Syrian civil war, on her second visit there since the fall of president Bashar Assad over three months ago.
Her trip also came weeks after sectarian massacres claimed more than 1,500 lives on Syria’s Mediterranean coast — the heartland of Assad’s Alawite minority.
“The horrific outbreaks of violence two weeks ago have caused a massive loss of trust,” said Baerbock. “The targeted killing of civilians is a terrible crime.”
She called on the transitional government of interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa to “control the actions of the groups within its own ranks and hold those responsible accountable.”
But she stressed that “we want to support the Syrians together with our European partners and the United Nations” as they rebuild their country.
Germany on Monday announced 300 million euros ($325 million) for reconstruction aid in Syria, as part of a donor conference that gathered total pledges of 5.8 billion euros.
A German foreign ministry source said Berlin had officially reopened its embassy in Syria, with an initially small diplomatic team working in Damascus.
Consular affairs and visas would continue to be handled from the Lebanese capital Beirut for practical reasons and due to the security situation in Syria.
The ministry source said that “Germany has a paramount interest in a stable Syria. We can better contribute to the difficult task of stabilization on the ground.
“We can build important diplomatic contacts and thus, among other things, push for an inclusive political transition process that takes into account the interests of all population groups.”
The source added that “with our diplomats on the ground, we can now also once again engage in important work with civil society. And we can respond directly and immediately to serious negative developments.”
Baerbock in her statement warned Syria’s interim authorities that a “new start” with Europe was conditional on it delivering security to all Syrians, regardless of faith, gender or ethnicity.
She said many Syrians “are scared that life in the future Syria will not be safe for all Syrians.”
In the days after March 6, Syria’s coast was gripped by the worst wave of violence since Assad’s overthrow.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,500 civilians, most of them Alawites, the minority to which Assad belongs.
Since Assad’s overthrow, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes on military sites in Syria, arguing the weapons must not fall into the hands of the new authorities whom it considers jihadists, and deployed troops to a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.
Baerbock said “the influence of foreign actors has brought nothing but chaos to Syria in the past.”
“Even today, attacks on Syrian territory threaten the country’s stability. All sides are called upon to exercise maximum military restraint and not to torpedo the intra-Syrian unification process.”

Topics: Fall of Assad German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock Syrian Arab Republic

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Turkiye detains 37 over ‘provocative’ social media posts following arrest of Istanbul mayor

Updated 20 March 2025
AP
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Turkiye detains 37 over ‘provocative’ social media posts following arrest of Istanbul mayor

  • Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said authorities identified 261 social media accounts that shared provocative posts inciting public hatred or crime
  • Imamoglu’s arrest came just days before he was expected to be nominated as the opposition Republican People’s Party’s presidential candidate
Updated 20 March 2025
AP

ISTANBUL: Turkish authorities detained 37 people for sharing “provocative” content on social media, the interior minister said Thursday, pressing ahead with a crackdown on dissenting voices that escalated with the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, a potential challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was arrested after a dawn raid on his residence on Wednesday as part of investigations into alleged corruption and terror links. Several other prominent figures, including two district mayors, were also detained.
The detention of a popular opposition leader and key Erdogan rival deepened concerns over democracy and sparked protests in Istanbul and elsewhere, despite a four-day ban on demonstrations in the city and road closures. On Thursday, hundreds of university students held a peaceful march in Istanbul to protest the detentions.
It also caused a shockwave in the financial market, triggering temporary halts in trading to prevent panic selling.
Critics see the crackdown as an effort by Erdogan to extend his more then two-decade rule following significant losses by the ruling party in local elections last year. Government officials reject claims that legal actions against opposition figures are politically motivated and insist that the courts operate independently.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said authorities identified 261 social media accounts that shared provocative posts inciting public hatred or crime, including 62 that are run by people based abroad. At least 37 of the suspected owners were detained and efforts to detain other suspects were continuing, he wrote on the X social media platform.
Imamoglu’s arrest came just days before he was expected to be nominated as the opposition Republican People’s Party’s presidential candidate in a primary scheduled for Sunday. The party’s leader has said the primary will go ahead as planned.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed concern over the mayor’s detention, saying it was a “very, very bad sign” for Turkiye’s relations with the European Union.
Scholz said it was “depressing for democracy in Turkiye, but certainly also depressing for the relationship between Europe and Turkiye.”
“We can only call for this to end immediately and for opposition and government to stand in competition with each other, and not the opposition being brought to court,” he said.
Prosecutors accused Imamoglu of exploiting his position for financial gain, including the improper allocation of government contracts.
In a separate investigation, prosecutors also accuse Imamoglu of aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, by allegedly forming an alliance with Kurdish groups for the Istanbul municipal elections. The PKK, behind a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye, is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, Washington and other allies.
It was not clear when authorities would begin questioning the mayor, who can be detained without charges for up to four days. Analysts say Imamoglu could be removed from office and replaced by a “trustee mayor” if he is formally charged with links to the PKK.
Before his detention, Imamoglu already faced multiple criminal cases that could result in prison sentences and a political ban. He is also appealing a 2022 conviction for insulting members of Turkiye’s Supreme Electoral Council, a case that could result in a political ban.
This week, a university nullified his diploma, citing alleged irregularities in his 1990 transfer from a private university in northern Cyprus to its business faculty, a decision Imamoglu said he would challenge. The decision effectively bars him from running for president, since the position requires candidates to be university graduates.
Imamoglu was elected mayor of Turkiye’s largest city in March 2019, a historic blow to Erdogan and the president’s Justice and Development Party, which had controlled Istanbul for a quarter-century. Erdogan’s party pushed to void the municipal election results in the city of 16 million, alleging irregularities.
The challenge resulted in a repeat of the election a few months later, which Imamoglu also won. The mayor retained his seat following local elections last year, during which his party made significant gains against Erdogan’s governing party.

Topics: Turkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

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UK bomb disposal expert injured in Gaza blast

Updated 20 March 2025
Arab News
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UK bomb disposal expert injured in Gaza blast

  • Ordnance ‘fired at or dropped on’ UN facility, killing 1, injuring 4 others
  • Mines Advisory Group: ‘Attacks against humanitarian premises are a breach of international law’
Updated 20 March 2025
Arab News

LONDON: A bomb disposal expert from the UK has been injured in an explosion in Gaza.

The unnamed 51-year-old was wounded at a UN facility in Deir Al-Balah on Wednesday. Four others were injured and a UN worker was killed in the incident.

The Briton, who was working in Gaza as an explosive ordnance disposal expert for the Mines Advisory Group, was treated locally before being moved to a hospital in Israel.

Darren Cormack, the charity’s CEO, told the BBC that the man was conducting an explosive hazards assessment at a UN Office for Project Services facility when the explosion occurred.

“The UN has confirmed that today’s incident did not occur in the course of normal EOD operations and resulted from ordnance being fired at or dropped on the building in which the team was working,” Cormack said.

“It is shocking that a humanitarian facility should be subject to attacks of this nature and that humanitarian workers are being killed and injured in the line of duty.”

Cormack added: “Attacks against humanitarian premises are a breach of international law.”

Health authorities in Gaza said the explosion was a result of Israeli military activity.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein posted on X: “The circumstances of the incident are being investigated. We emphasize that the initial examination found no connection to IDF (Israel Defense Forces) activity whatsoever.”

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN secretary-general, told the BBC: “We are making it clear that all military operations have to be conducted in a way that ensures that all civilians are respected and protected.”

UNOPS chief Jorge Moreira da Silva said the explosion was “not an accident” and described the situation in Gaza as “unconscionable.”

Topics: War on Gaza

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Putin offers cooperation to Syrian leader, backs efforts to stabilize country

Updated 20 March 2025
Reuters
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Putin offers cooperation to Syrian leader, backs efforts to stabilize country

  • Russia, which has two strategically important military bases in Syria, was one of the main supporters of former President Bashar Assad
Updated 20 March 2025
Reuters

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a message to Syria’s interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa supporting efforts to stabilize the situation in the country and saying Russia is ready to engage in “practical cooperation,” Russian state news agency TASS reported on Thursday.
Putin confirmed “Russia’s continuing readiness to develop practical cooperation with the Syrian leadership on the whole range of issues on the bilateral agenda in order to strengthen traditionally friendly Russian-Syrian relations,” it quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
Syria has been rocked by a wave of sectarian killings. The Kremlin
said
earlier this month it wanted to see a united and “friendly” Syria because instability there could affect the whole of the Middle East.
Russia, which has two strategically important military bases in Syria, was one of the main supporters of former President Bashar Assad, who fled to Russia after he was toppled in December.

Topics: Russia Syria Fall of Assad

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