Israel-Hamas truce in Gaza begins, after delay

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
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Israel-Hamas truce in Gaza begins, after delay

  • Israeli strikes killed 8 people during delay, says Gaza's civil defense agency
  • Israel confirms receiving hostages list that caused the delay in ceasefire 

JERUSALEM: Israel on Sunday said a truce with Hamas began in Gaza at 0915 GMT, nearly three hours after initially scheduled, following a last-minute delay on the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

During the delay, Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed eight people.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office, issued less than an hour before the truce had been set to start at 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT), said he had “instructed the IDF (military) that the ceasefire... will not begin until Israel has received the list” of hostages to be freed.

Hamas attributed the delay to “technical reasons,” as well as the “complexities of the field situation and the continued bombing,” ultimately publishing at around 10:30 a.m. the names of three Israeli women to be released on Sunday.

Israel confirmed it had received the list and was “checking the details,” before confirming shortly afterwards that the truce would begin at 11:15 am local time.

AFPTV live images from northeastern Gaza showed a plume of grey smoke about 30 minutes after the truce was earlier to take effect, and again around 30 minutes later.

The Israeli military confirmed it was continuing “to strike within the Gaza area” following Netanyahu’s directive.

Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said three people were killed in the north of the territory and five in Gaza City, with 25 wounded.

AFP images showed displaced Gazans streaming northwards from areas around Gaza City where they had been sheltering, some flashing the victory sign.

But others saw their plans to return home thwarted by the delay of the ceasefire.

“I was on my way home with my family when we heard the sound of bombing,” said Mohammed Baraka, 36.

“We can’t reach our house; the situation is dangerous. I don’t know what to do. I feel frustrated and devastated.”

The initial exchange was to see three Israeli hostages released from captivity in return for a first group of Palestinian prisoners.

A total of 33 hostages taken by militants during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel will be returned from Gaza during an initial 42-day truce.

Under the deal, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be released from Israeli jails.

The truce is intended to pave the way for an end to more than 15 months of war sparked by Hamas’s attack, the deadliest in Israeli history.

It follows a deal struck by mediators Qatar, the United States and Egypt after months of negotiations, and takes effect on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president.

In a televised address on Saturday, Netanyahu called the 42-day first phase a “temporary ceasefire” and said Israel had US support to return to war if necessary.

In Gaza City, shortly after the deal was initially meant to go into effect, people were already celebrating, waving Palestinian flags in the street.

But as it became clear the hostilities were continuing, the joy gave way to desperation for some.

“I’m dying of despair,” said Maha Abed, a 27-year-old displaced from Rafah who had been waiting since dawn for her husband to pick her up and take her home. “He called to tell me we won’t be returning today. The drones are firing at civilians.”

“Enough playing with our emotions — we’re exhausted,” she added. “I don’t want to spend another night in this tent.”

In Deir Al-Balah, an AFP journalist observed dozens of Palestinians gathered in front of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital seeking information about the unfolding events, particularly whether or not they would be able to return to their homes.

The Israeli army warned Gaza residents early Sunday not to approach its forces or Israeli territory.

“We urge you not to head toward the buffer zone or IDF forces for your safety,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on Telegram.

“At this stage, heading toward the buffer zone or moving from south to north via Gaza Valley puts you at risk.”

At a rally for the hostages in Tel Aviv the night before, attendees were guarded ahead of the scheduled exchanges.

“I’m really stressed because I don’t know about the situation of Ofer, my cousin,” said Ifat Kaldron, whose cousin is among the hostages.

“I’m just going to be happy whenever I see the last hostage crossing the border.”

Israel has prepared reception centers to provide medical treatment and counselling to the freed hostages before they return to their families after their long ordeal.

Israel’s justice ministry had previously said 737 Palestinian prisoners and detainees would be freed during the deal’s first phase, starting from 4:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Sunday.

Egypt on Saturday said more than 1,890 Palestinian prisoners would be freed in the initial phase.

Hundreds of trucks waited at the Gaza border, poised to enter from Egypt as soon as they get the all-clear to deliver desperately needed aid.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said 600 trucks a day would enter Gaza after the ceasefire takes effect, including 50 carrying fuel.

There has been only one previous truce in the war, lasting for one week in November 2023.

That ceasefire also saw the release of hostages held by militants in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Of the 251 people taken hostage, 94 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has destroyed much of Gaza, killing at least 46,899 people, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

The truce was to take effect on the eve of Trump’s inauguration for a second term as president of the United States.

Trump, who claimed credit for the ceasefire deal, after months of effort by the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden, told US network NBC on Saturday that he had told Netanyahu that the war “has to end.”

“We want it to end, but to keep doing what has to be done,” he said.

Brett McGurk, the pointman for outgoing President Joe Biden, was joined in the region by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff in an unusual pairing to finalize the agreement, US officials said.

Under the deal, Israeli forces will withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza and allow displaced Palestinians to return “to their residences,” the Qatari prime minister said.

Biden said an unfinalized second phase of the agreement would bring a “permanent end to the war.”


Turkiye’s Erdogan says US making “wrong calculations” in Mideast

Updated 7 sec ago
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Turkiye’s Erdogan says US making “wrong calculations” in Mideast

  • Erdogan said he expected Trump to realize his election campaign promises of taking steps for peace, rather than create new conflicts
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the administration of US President Donald Trump was making “wrong calculations” regarding the Middle East, adding that heeding “Zionist lies” would only exacerbate conflicts.
Turkiye has rejected Trump’s plan to remove the more than 2 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, claim US control of it and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” It has also said Israel’s assault on Gaza amounted to a genocide, while calling for international measures against its government.
“Unfortunately, the United States is making a wrong calculation about our region. One should not be engaged in an approach that disregards the region’s history, values, and accumulation,” he said, according to a transcript of comments to journalists on a return flight from Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Erdogan said he expected Trump to realize his election campaign promises of taking steps for peace, rather than create new conflicts.
He said he saw no real signs of a ceasefire in Gaza despite a truce agreement between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, and added the Muslim world had still not been able to take a collective step on the issue.

Lebanon marks 20 years since Rafic Hariri killed as power balance shifts

Updated 39 min 28 sec ago
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Lebanon marks 20 years since Rafic Hariri killed as power balance shifts

  • A UN-backed court sentenced two Hezbollah members in absentia to life imprisonment for the massive suicide bombing that killed him and 21 others

BEIRUT: Lebanon on Friday marked 20 years since former prime minister Rafic Hariri’s assassination, with seismic political changes underway that have weakened Hezbollah and its backers and could herald a comeback for Hariri’s son Saad.
Rafic Hariri, a towering political figure who oversaw Lebanon’s reconstruction era after the 1975-1990 civil war, had recently resigned as premier when he was killed on February 14, 2005.
In 2022, a UN-backed court sentenced two Hezbollah members in absentia to life imprisonment for the massive suicide bombing that killed him and 21 others, though the group has refused to hand them over.
His son Saad, who served three times as prime minister, is based in the United Arab Emirates but has again returned for the annual commemorations.
This time, he is back in a changed Lebanon.
The commemoration comes days before the deadline for implementing a Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire, which ended more than a year of hostilities that weakened the group.
Concerns have mounted for the fragile truce after Beirut rejected Israel’s demand to remain in five southern locations after the February 18 deadline.
But Hezbollah still carries weight, with supporters Thursday blocking the airport road after two Iranian planes were barred from landing.
A day earlier, Israel’s army had accused Iran of sending funds to arm the group through the Beirut airport.
On Friday morning, a few thousand Hariri supporters carrying Lebanese flags gathered near his father’s burial site in downtown Beirut.
“For the first time in 20 years, our joy is double: first because the Syrian regime fell... and second because Sheikh Saad is among us,” homemaker Diana Al-Masri, 52, told AFP.
A source close to Hariri said he was due to give a speech addressing developments “in Lebanon and the region,” though he may not resume political activities right away.
“His supporters are calling on him to return to political life,” said the source, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Until early 2022, Hariri was the main Sunni Muslim leader in a country where political power is shared along sectarian lines.
Once enjoying strong support from Saudi Arabia, Hariri’s relationship with the regional heavyweight deteriorated because of his conciliatory attitude toward Hezbollah.
In 2017, Hariri resigned as premier in a shock address from Riyadh, citing Iran’s “grip” on Lebanon through Hezbollah and prompting accusations he was being held against his will.
French President Emmanuel Macron had to intervene to secure his return to Lebanon, where Hariri rescinded his resignation.
He resigned again as prime minister after nationwide protests in 2019 demanding the wholesale overhaul of Lebanon’s political class.
In a tearful 2022 announcement, he said he had suspended his political activities and those of his party, citing “Iranian influence” among other reasons.
The source told AFP that all these reasons had now “vanished.”
For decades, Hezbollah was Lebanon’s dominant political force, but its arsenal and leadership were decimated during its war with Israel, while Syrian ally Bashar Assad’s ouster cut the group’s vital arms supply lines.
’New chance’
In January, former army chief Joseph Aoun was elected president after a more than two-year vacuum.
He was widely seen as the United States and Saudi Arabia’s preferred choice.
This month, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who had been presiding judge at the International Criminal Court, formed a government. On Friday, Salam visited Rafic Hariri’s tomb to pay his respects.
“Lebanon has been given a new chance as Iranian influence is declining and the international community has returned,” the source said.
Riyadh has recently retaken an interest in Lebanese politics after distancing itself for years over Hezbollah’s influence.
“Saudi Arabia seeks a strong, organized Sunni leadership,” said Imad Salamey, head of the International and Political Studies Department at the Lebanese American University.
“If (Saad) Hariri can present himself as that figure, his return would serve both his interests and those of the kingdom.”
His father’s assassination anniversary “will serve as an opportunity to assess his ability to mobilize support and reassert his leadership within the Sunni community,” Salamey added.
Hariri was thrust into the political limelight following his father’s murder, widely attributed to Damascus and Hezbollah at the time, which triggered massive protests that drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon after 29 years of occupation.
Rafic Hariri was a billionaire and the architect of Lebanon’s reconstruction era after the 1975-1990 civil war.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, is desperate to prove it has not lost ground to political rivals.
After the airport protests, authorities said they were working to bring back Lebanese passengers stranded in Iran using two Middle East Airlines planes.
But on Friday a source from the national carrier told AFP that Tehran had denied them permission to land in a tit-for-tat move.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of using Lebanon’s only airport to transfer weapons from Iran, claims the group and Lebanese officials have denied, with the army reinforcing security measures there in past months.


Fourteen Gaza children flown to Italy for treatment

Updated 14 February 2025
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Fourteen Gaza children flown to Italy for treatment

Rome: Fourteen Palestinian children, many with cancer, have been flown to Italy for medical treatment, the latest among dozens brought from Gaza following the Hamas-Israel war, the foreign ministry said Friday.
The children and their families, a total of 45 people, had on Wednesday crossed the Rafah border from Gaza into Egypt, where they underwent medical checks at the Italian hospital in Cairo, officials said.
They were flown to Italy on an Italian military plane, and greeted at Rome’s Ciampino airport on Thursday evening by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.
Treating the children was part of Italy’s efforts to promote peace and dialogue in the region, he said Friday, a “diplomacy made of solidarity, which restores hope to the most fragile and defenseless.”
Some of the children were due to be treated in the capital, the others heading north for treatment in hospitals including in Turin and Milan, a ministry spokesman said.
Two of the children disembarked in Rome were headed for the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu hospital, which treated nine other Palestinian children last year.
All those nine, ranging from one to 15 years old, have been discharged, a hospital spokesman told AFP.
Italy is among several European countries to treat children injured or suffering from disease in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023.
“Every child we bring to Italy is a sign of hope, a commitment to life and the future,” Defense Secretary Guido Crosetto said.
The first 11 Palestinian children arrived in Italy in January 2024, followed by dozens more in the months that followed, some flown in and some transported on the Italian naval ship Vulcano.


The scent of the mummy. Research discovers ancient Egyptian remains smell nice

Updated 14 February 2025
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The scent of the mummy. Research discovers ancient Egyptian remains smell nice

  • “Woody,” “spicy” and “sweet” were the top descriptions
  • They studied mummies as old as 5,000 years from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo

LONDON: At first whiff, it sounds repulsive: sniff the essence of an ancient corpse.
But researchers who indulged their curiosity in the name of science found that well-preserved Egyptian mummies actually smell pretty good.
“In films and books, terrible things happen to those who smell mummified bodies,” said Cecilia Bembibre, director of research at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Heritage. “We were surprised at the pleasantness of them.”
“Woody,” “spicy” and “sweet” were the leading descriptions from what sounded more like a wine tasting than a mummy sniffing exercise. Floral notes were also detected, which could be from pine and juniper resins used in embalming.
The study published Thursday in the Journal of the American Chemical Society used both chemical analysis and a panel of human sniffers to evaluate the odors from nine mummies as old as 5,000 years that had been either in storage or on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The researchers wanted to systematically study the smell of mummies because it has long been a subject of fascination for the public and researchers alike, said Bembibre, one of the report’s authors. Archaeologists, historians, conservators and even fiction writers have devoted pages of their work to the subject — for good reason.
Scent was an important consideration in the mummification process that used oils, waxes and balms to preserve the body and its spirit for the afterlife. The practice was largely reserved for pharaohs and nobility and pleasant smells were associated with purity and deities while bad odors were signs of corruption and decay.
Without sampling the mummies themselves, which would be invasive, researchers from UCL and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia were able to measure whether aromas were coming from the archaeological item, pesticides or other products used to conserve the remains, or from deterioration due to mold, bacteria or microorganisms.
“We were quite worried that we might find notes or hints of decaying bodies, which wasn’t the case,” said Matija Strlič, a chemistry professor at the University of Ljubljana. “We were specifically worried that there might be indications of microbial degradation, but that was not the case, which means that the environment in this museum, is actually quite good in terms of preservation.”
Using technical instruments to measure and quantify air molecules emitted from sarcophagi to determine the state of preservation without touching the mummies was like the Holy Grail, Strlič said.
“It tells us potentially what social class a mummy was from and and therefore reveals a lot of information about the mummified body that is relevant not just to conservators, but to curators and archaeologists as well,” he said. “We believe that this approach is potentially of huge interest to other types of museum collections.”
Barbara Huber, a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany who was not involved in the study, said the findings provide crucial data on compounds that could preserve or degrade mummified remains. The information could be used to better protect the ancient bodies for future generations.
“However, the research also underscores a key challenge: the smells detected today are not necessarily those from the time of mummification,” Huber said. “Over thousands of years, evaporation, oxidation, and even storage conditions have significantly altered the original scent profile.”
Huber authored a study two years ago that analyzed residue from a jar that had contained mummified organs of a noblewoman to identify embalming ingredients, their origins and what they revealed about trade routes. She then worked with a perfumer to create an interpretation of the embalming scent, known as “Scent of Eternity,” for an exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark.
Researchers of the current study hope to do something similar, using their findings to develop “smellscapes” to artificially recreate the scents they detected and enhance the experience for future museumgoers.
“Museums have been called white cubes, where you are prompted to read, to see, to approach everything from a distance with your eyes,” Bembibre said. “Observing the mummified bodies through a glass case reduces the experience because we don’t get to smell them. We don’t get to know about the mummification process in an experiential way, which is one of the ways that we understand and engage with the world.”


Hezbollah supporters protest banning Iranian plane from landing in Beirut

Updated 14 February 2025
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Hezbollah supporters protest banning Iranian plane from landing in Beirut

  • Young men set tires on fire, leading to scuffles between angry protesters and soldiers
  • The Lebanese army had been deployed at Beirut International Airport

BEIRUT: Supporters of Iran-backed Hezbollah group blocked the Beirut airport road and burned tires on Thursday to protest a decision barring two Iranian planes from landing in the Lebanese capital, state media and an airport official said.
“Young men set tires on fire in front of the airport entrance, raising banners supporting Hezbollah’s former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah,” Lebanon’s National News Agency said.
Some of the young men raised Hezbollah’s yellow flag and held pictures of Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli strike in September, as well as Iran’s slain Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani, AFP footage showed.
The Lebanese army had been deployed there, the NNA said, with videos online showing scuffles between angry protesters and soldiers.
An official at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport told AFP that the Public Works and Transport ministry had asked the facility to inform Mahan Air that Lebanon could not welcome two of its Beirut-bound flights.
One flight was scheduled for Thursday and another for Friday, said the official who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
“The two flights were rescheduled to next week,” he added, without saying why.
Earlier in the day, video footage circulated online showing a Lebanese man stranded at a Tehran airport calling on his peers to block the Beirut airport road.
“We have been waiting here since this morning. We are Lebanese... no one can control us,” the man said, calling on Hezbollah-allied parliament speaker Nabih Berri to secure the return of Lebanese travelers.
A November 27 ceasefire agreement ended more than a year of Israel-Hezbollah hostilities including about two months of all-out war, but both sides regularly accuse the other violations.
Saeed Chalandri, CEO of Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport, said “today’s flight to Beirut was scheduled... but the destination (country) did not issue the necessary permission,” in an interview with Mehr news agency.
A day earlier, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said Iran’s Quds Force and Hezbollah “have been exploiting... over the past few weeks the Beirut International Airport through civilian flights, to smuggle funds dedicated to arming” the group.
He added that the Israeli army was sending information to the committee tasked with ensuring ceasefire violations are identified and dealt with in order “to thwart” such attempts, though some had been successful.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of using Lebanon’s only airport to transfer weapons from Iran.
Hezbollah and Lebanese officials have denied the claims, with authorities reinforcing surveillance and inspections at the facility.
In January, an Iranian plane carrying a diplomatic delegation was subjected to inspection, sparking outrage from Hezbollah and its supporters and praise by its detractors.