Five Iraqi soldiers killed in Daesh attack, sources say
Iraq’s defense ministry issued a statement mourning the loss of Col. Khaled Nagi Wassak “along with a number of heroic fighters of the regiment as a result of their response to a terrorist attack”
Updated 14 May 2024
Reuters
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi commanding officer and four soldiers were killed and five others injured on Monday in an attack by suspected Daesh militants on an army post in eastern Iraq, two security sources said.
The attack took place between Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, a rural area that remains a hotbed of activity for militant cells years after Iraq declared final victory over the extremist group in 2017.
Iraq’s defense ministry issued a statement mourning the loss of a colonel and “a number of heroic fighters of the regiment as a result of their response to a terrorist attack.”
Security forces repelled the attack but there were many casualties in the process, the statement added.
Iraq has seen relative security stability in recent years after the chaos of the 2003-US-led invasion and years of bloody sectarian conflict that followed.
Baghdad is now looking to draw down the U.S-led international coalition that helped defeat Islamic State and remain in the country in an advisory role, saying local security forces can handle the threat themselves.
Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the Gaza ceasefire
Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza
Updated 08 February 2025
AFP
GAZA CITY: Hamas on Friday said Israel’s blocking of heavy machinery entering Gaza to clear rubble caused by war was affecting efforts to extract the bodies of hostages.
“Preventing the entry of heavy equipment and machinery needed to remove 55 million tonnes of rubble ... will undoubtedly affect the resistance’s ability to extract from under the rubble the dead prisoners (hostages),” said Salama Marouf, spokesman for Hamas’s media office in Gaza.
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the terms of the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza, including key items such as fuel, tents, and heavy machinery for clearing rubble.
The Israeli government and COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, have rejected the accusation.
Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.
Hamas’ armed wing released the names of three captives it said would be freed on Saturday in a fifth hostage-prisoner swap as part of an ongoing agreement with Israel.
“Within the framework of the Al-Aqsa Flood deal for the prisoner exchange, the (Ezzedine) Al-Qassam Brigades have decided to release” the three hostages, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the armed wing, said on Telegram.
Hamas, Israel to begin fifth hostage-prisoner exchange
The three men set to be released on Saturday are Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami, according to Hamas
Updated 33 min 25 sec ago
AFP
JERUSALEM: Hamas is set to release three Israeli hostages on Saturday in exchange for 183 prisoners held by Israel in the fifth exchange of a fragile Gaza ceasefire.
The exchange comes despite uproar in the region over a proposal by US President Donald Trump to clear out the Gaza Strip of its inhabitants and for the United States to take over the Palestinian territory.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed to AFP on Friday it had received a list of hostages for release from Gaza after Hamas published three names of captives to be freed.
The three men set to be released on Saturday are Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami, according to Hamas. Their names were confirmed by Netanyahu’s office.
Former hostage Yarden Bibas, who was freed last week by Hamas militants in Gaza, on Friday urged Netanyahu to help bring back his wife and two children from the Palestinian territory.
Palestinians gather around a stage being prepared ahead of the hand over to the Red Cross of three Israeli hostages by Hamas in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip on Feb. 8, 2025. (AP)
“Prime Minister Netanyahu, I’m now addressing you with my own words... bring my family back, bring my friends back, bring everyone home,” Bibas said in his first public message following his release.
Hamas previously said his wife Shiri and his two sons Ariel and Kfir – the youngest hostages – were dead, but Israel has not confirmed their deaths.
Netanyahu, who is in Washington, will “monitor this phase of the hostages’ release from the control center of the delegation in the US,” the premier’s office said in a separate statement.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum urged the government on Friday to stick with the Gaza truce, even as Trump’s comments sparked uproar across the Middle East and beyond.
“An entire nation demands to see the hostages return home,” the Israeli campaign group said in a statement.
“Now is the time to ensure the agreement is completed – until the very last one,” it added.
Israel and Hamas have completed four swaps under the first stage of the ceasefire agreement.
Palestinian militants, led by Hamas, have so far freed 18 hostages in exchange for around 600 mostly Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.
The ceasefire, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, aims to secure the release of 33 hostages during the first 42-day phase of the agreement.
Negotiations on the second stage of the ceasefire were set to begin on Monday, but there have been no details on the status of the talks.
The second stage aims to secure the release of more hostages and pave the way for a permanent end to the war, which began on October 7, 2023 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel.
During the attack, militants took 251 hostages to Gaza. Seventy-six remain in captivity, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliation has killed at least 47,583 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.
Chemical weapons agency chief to meet Syrian officials in Damascus on Saturday, sources say
The OPCW has asked the authorities in Syria to secure all relevant locations and safeguard any relevant documentation
Updated 08 February 2025
Reuters
DAMASCUS: The head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a global non-proliferation agency, will meet Syrian officials in Damascus on Saturday, three sources familiar with the visit told Reuters.
Director General Fernando Arias was expected to meet interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, two of the sources said, in a sign of Syrian willingness to cooperate with the agency after years of strained relations under now-toppled leader Bashar Assad.
The sudden fall of the Assad government in December brought hope that the country could be rid of chemical weapons.
Following a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of people in 2013, Syria joined the OPCW under a US-Russian deal and 1,300 metric tons of chemical weapons and precursors were destroyed by the international community.
As part of membership, Damascus was supposed to be subjected to inspections. But for more than a decade the OPCW was prevented from uncovering the true scale of the chemical weapons program. Syria’s declared stockpile has never accurately reflected the situation on the ground, inspectors concluded.
When asked about contacts with the OPCW over chemical weapons still in Syria, the country’s new defense minister Murhaf Abu Qasra told Reuters in January that he “does not believe” that any remnants of Syria’s chemical weapons program remained intact.
“Even if there was anything left, it’s been bombed by the Israeli military,” Abu Qasra said, referring to a wave of Israeli strikes across Syria in the wake of Assad’s fall.
Details of the mission to Syria are still being worked out but its key aims will be finding and securing chemical stocks to prevent proliferation risk, identifying those responsible for their use and overseeing the destruction of remaining munitions.
The OPCW has asked the authorities in Syria to secure all relevant locations and safeguard any relevant documentation.
Three investigations — a joint UN-OPCW mechanism, the OPCW’s Investigation and Identification team, and a UN war crimes investigation — concluded that Syrian government forces used the nerve agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs in attacks during the civil war that killed or injured thousands.
A French court issued an arrest warrant for Assad which was upheld on appeal over the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians. Syria and its military backer Russia always denied using chemical weapons.
The OPCW, a treaty-based agency in The Hague with 193 member countries, is tasked with implementing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Egypt, North Korea, and South Sudan have neither signed nor acceded to the convention and Israel has signed but not ratified it.
US State Department lays out plans for $7 billion-plus arms sale to Israel as Netanyahu visits DC
In late January, soon after he took office, he lifted the hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel
Updated 08 February 2025
AP
WASHINGTON: The State Department has formally told Congress that it plans to sell more than $7 billion in weapons to Israel, including thousands of bombs and missiles, just two days after President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The massive arms sale comes as a fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas holds, even as Trump continues to tout his widely criticized proposal to move all Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop it as an international travel destination.
The sale is another step in Trump’s effort to bolster Israel’s weapons stocks. In late January, soon after he took office, he lifted the hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. The Biden administration had paused a shipment of the bombs over concerns about civilian casualties, particularly during an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Trump told reporters that he released them to Israel, “because they bought them.”
According to the State Department, two separate sales were sent to Congress on Friday. One is for $6.75 billion in an array of munitions, guidance kits and other related equipment. It includes 166 small diameter bombs, 2,800 500-pound bombs, and thousands of guidance kits, fuzes and other bomb components and support equipment. Those deliveries would begin this year.
The other arms package is for 3,000 Hellfire missiles and related equipment for an estimated cost of $660 million. Deliveries of the missiles are expected to begin in 2028.
Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies
Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead
Updated 07 February 2025
AFP
GAZA CITY: Hamas on Friday said Israel’s blocking of heavy machinery entering Gaza to clear rubble caused by war was affecting efforts to extract the bodies of hostages.
“Preventing the entry of heavy equipment and machinery needed to remove 55 million tonnes of rubble ... will undoubtedly affect the resistance’s ability to extract from under the rubble the dead prisoners (hostages),” said Salama Marouf, spokesman for Hamas’s media office in Gaza.
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the terms of the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza, including key items such as fuel, tents, and heavy machinery for clearing rubble.
FASTFACT
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the terms of the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli government and COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, have rejected the accusation.
Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.
Hamas’ armed wing released the names of three captives it said would be freed on Saturday in a fifth hostage-prisoner swap as part of an ongoing agreement with Israel.
“Within the framework of the Al-Aqsa Flood deal for the prisoner exchange, the (Ezzedine) Al-Qassam Brigades have decided to release” the three hostages, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the armed wing, said on Telegram.
