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Turkey will on Monday canvass peers in the Islamic world to bring their influence to bear on the future of Gaza, as fears grow for a just weeks-old truce. The October 10 ceasefire in the two-year-long Israel-Hamas war, brokered by US President Donald Trump, has become increasingly fragile, tested by continued Israeli strikes and claims of Palestinian attacks on Israeli soldiers. Turkey, among the most fervent critics of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, will welcome the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Pakistan and Indonesia in Istanbul on Monday. All those top diplomats were consulted by Trump in late September on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, six days before the US leader unveiled his plan to end the fighting in Gaza.According to Turkish foreign ministry sources, Ankara is set to urge those dignitaries to support plans for Palestinians to take control of the coastal territory’s security and governance.On the eve of the Monday meet, Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan welcomed a Hamas delegation led by Khalil al-Hayya, the Palestinian Islamist movement’s lead negotiator.”We must end the massacre in Gaza. A ceasefire in itself is not enough,” Fidan said, arguing for the two-state solution to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “We should recognise that Gaza should be governed by the Palestinians, and act with caution,” he added.- Turkey-Israel tensions -Besides its denunciations of Israel, Turkey has been instrumental in backing Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war in Gaza.Fidan, who has accused Israel of seeking excuses to break Trump’s truce, is also expected to repeat calls for Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, which is wracked by hunger and tens of thousands of deaths from the Israeli army’s offensive. Yet Israel has long viewed Turkey’s diplomatic overtures, including towards Trump, with suspicion as a result of the country’s closeness to Hamas. Israeli leaders have repeatedly voiced their opposition to Turkey, a NATO member with one of the region’s most credible militaries, having any role in the international peacekeeping force mooted for Gaza.Under Trump’s plan, that stabilisation mission is meant to take over in the wake of the Israeli army’s withdrawal from the Palestinian territory.A Turkish disaster relief team, sent to help efforts to recover the many bodies buried under Gaza’s rubble — including those of Israeli hostages seized by Hamas — has likewise been stuck at the border because of the Israeli government’s refusal to let them in, according to Ankara.

Inside a restored house in central Tehran, toys from every era, from ancient Persia to Soviet Russia and the United States, share the same space, stirring childhood memories from long ago.”I always thought that the target audience would be children and teenagers,” said 46-year-old Azadeh Bayat, founder of the museum, which opened last year after six years of renovations.”But now even adults visit the museum frequently,” she told AFP.Bayat, a researcher in children’s education, has gathered more than 2,000 toys from around the world.”By discovering the toys of their parents and grandparents, children learn to better understand and connect their own world with that of older generations,” she said. In the museum, a clay animal figurine from ancient Persia stood alone in a glass case.Nearby, a group of wooden “matryoshka” dolls, in traditional Russian dress with rosy cheeks, stood on one shelf, gleaming across from brightly painted Soviet tin cars.An Atari console, one of the early versions of video games from the 1980s, sits among the displays.American Barbie dolls, which were once heavily restricted in Iran as a symbol of Western influence, were also on display. Their popularity pushed Iranian authorities to create the modestly dressed “Sara and Dara” dolls as local equivalent in the early 2000s.For Maedeh Mirzaei, a 27-year-old employee in the gold sector, the experience at the museum was nostalgic. “There was so much publicity around the two Iranian dolls, their faces appeared on books and notebooks everywhere,” she said.Across the room, a museum worker demonstrated to a group of visiting schoolchildren the mechanics of a wooden acrobat puppet, known as “Ali Varjeh”, or “Ali the Jumper”, whose movements come to life with the pull of a string.The museum recently held an event themed around the Belgian character Tintin, as well as other shadow puppetry shows. “I remember playing with friends in the street or at home with these toys,” said 31-year-old Mehdi Fathi, a fitness instructor who was visiting the museum.”Some children nowadays may think that our dolls were silly and primitive,” he said.”But those toys helped us grow.”

Iraq will hold parliamentary elections on November 11, with analysts saying Iran will be watching closely as it hopes to retain influence over its neighbour after losing regional leverage during the Gaza war.The past two years have seen Iran-backed groups including Palestinian militants Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Huthis in Yemen suffer heavy losses at Israel’s hands.Iran itself was on the receiving end of an unprecedented Israeli bombing campaign in June, which the United States briefly joined, and also lost a major ally with last year’s overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.Weakened on the regional stage, Iran intends to consolidate its gains in Iraq, which since the US invasion of 2003 has become one of the anchors of its regional influence.Tehran exerts power in Baghdad through Shiite parties that play a key role in appointing prime ministers, including current premier Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, and allied armed factions.”Tehran retains its influence as long as its allies hold decision-making power,” political analyst Ihsan al-Shammari told AFP.Iraq, for its part, has for years navigated a delicate balancing act between Tehran and Washington and has long been a fertile ground for proxy battles.Pro-Iranian groups claimed responsibility for firing on US positions in Iraq early in the Gaza war, attacks that triggered retaliatory strikes from the United States.Those groups then stayed out of the 12-day Iran-Israel war, even after Washington joined the bombing.Analyst Munqith Dagher said that “Iran is no longer in a position to impose its conditions”.”But that does not mean it will not try to exert influence,” the director of the IIACSS think tank added.- ‘Performative act’ -In the 2021 general election, influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s faction won the most seats before withdrawing from parliament.The legislature is now controlled by the Coordination Framework, the Iran-aligned coalition that brought Sudani to power.This time, Sadr has refused to participate in what he described as a “flawed election dominated by sectarian, ethnic and partisan interests”, and called on his supporters to boycott the vote.The upcoming elections will be the sixth since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.Nevertheless, enthusiasm for voting appears to be on the wane.Chatham House, a think tank, has predicted that “participation may fall to the lowest level since 2003″.”Iraqis increasingly view elections not as a way to influence policy, but as a performative act with little impact on governance,” it added.More than 21 million voters are eligible to elect 329 lawmakers in the ballot, which will pave the way for the appointment of a new president — a largely ceremonial role — and a prime minister chosen after lengthy negotiations.In Iraq, the role of prime minister traditionally goes to a Shiite and the presidency to a Kurd, while the speaker of parliament is usually Sunni.- US influence -Observers also spoke of the influence of the United States. “There is a real desire on the part of the US to change the domestic political landscape” in order to reduce Iranian influence, former Sudani adviser Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie said.Washington has sanctioned Iraqis accused of helping Tehran evade US sanctions, and also strengthened its economic presence through contracts in oil, technology and healthcare.”Washington expects the next prime minister to deliver tangible steps that limit Iranian influence, regardless of the electoral outcome,” said Tamer Badawi, an analyst with the UK defence think tank RUSI.”The United States does not want to see… Iran-aligned groups retaining operational autonomy,” he told AFP.”Nor does Washington want Iran to use Iraq as a channel to resell oil products or secure access to hard currency,” he added.Washington also maintains about 2,500 troops in Iraq, alongside 900 more in Syria, as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group.Mark Savaya, the new US special envoy to Iraq, insisted on the importance of “a fully sovereign Iraq, free from malign external interference, including from Iran and its proxies”.”There is no place for armed groups operating outside the authority of the state,” he said on X last month.The upcoming election will include the autonomous region of Kurdistan, where the historic rivalry between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan remains fierce.At least 25 percent of parliamentary seats must go to women, according to the quota system that also reserves nine seats for minorities.More than 7,700 candidates, nearly a third of whom are women, are running for election in the country of around 46 million people.

Israel said on Sunday it had received the remains of three additional captives from Hamas as part of the ongoing hostage-prisoner exchange under a US-brokered ceasefire agreement for Gaza.Despite occasional flare-ups, a fragile truce has held in Gaza since October 10 under a deal focused on the return of all Israeli hostages, both living and dead.”Israel has received, through the Red Cross, the coffins of three fallen hostages that were handed over to IDF and Shin Bet forces inside the Gaza Strip,” the prime minister’s office said.An Israeli health ministry spokesperson said later that their bodies had arrived at a national forensic centre “for identification and investigation into the circumstances and cause of death”.Experts from the centre would then meet with the families of the deceased “to discuss and elaborate on the findings”, the spokesperson said.Hamas’s armed wing said it had found the remains earlier on Sunday “along the route of one of the tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip”.Hamas had been holding 48 hostages in Gaza, including 20 confirmed alive, when the ceasefire was announced.Since the start of the truce, Hamas has released the surviving hostages and begun handing over the remains of 28 deceased captives.Of the latter, it has so far returned 17 — including 15 Israelis, one Thai national, and one Nepali.Israel has accused Hamas of dragging its feet in returning the bodies, while the Palestinian group says the process is slow because many remains are buried beneath Gaza’s rubble.It has repeatedly called on mediators and the Red Cross to provide it with the necessary equipment and personnel to recover the bodies.Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement that the handover on Sunday showed that the group “was making every effort to return the bodies as quickly as possible”.  An Israeli campaign group representing the families of hostages urged the government to act decisively to ensure all the deceased are brought home.”The Hostage Families demand that the prime minister act with determination and firmness in order to bring about the immediate realisation of Hamas’s commitments under the agreement and to return all of the deceased hostages to Israel’s hands,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.- ‘Life is impossible’ -In addition to returning the bodies of the 17 hostages, Hamas has also handed over partial remains of a hostage whose body was recovered by the Israeli army last year.That incident sparked outrage in Israel, which accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire agreement by returning only partial remains instead of a complete body of another hostage.”We call for the return of all 11 deceased hostages who have still not been returned to Israeli soil,” Inbal Bachar, aunt of Sahar Baruch, whose remains were handed over earlier this week, said during Baruch’s funeral on Sunday.”We cannot continue our lives until they all return,” she said, according to a statement issued by the forum.In Gaza, Palestinians have been hoping that an Israeli military withdrawal will follow the truce and bring an end to their ordeal.”We want the second phase of the agreement to begin so that we can return to our homes,” said Naif al-Sulaibi, a resident of Jabalia in northern Gaza.”As long as the Yellow Line and the army remain here, life is impossible and conditions will stay unbearable,” he added, referring to the de facto boundary marking Israeli military positions inside Gaza.The implementation of the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan has yet to be agreed, particularly as it concerns disarming Hamas, establishing a transitional authority and deploying an international stabilisation force in Gaza.

Israel on Sunday signalled it could intensify operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused of rearming, urging Beirut to disarm the Iran-backed group.Despite a November 2024 ceasefire with the Lebanese militant group, Israel maintains troops in five areas in southern Lebanon and has kept up regular strikes.”Hezbollah is playing with fire, and the president of Lebanon is dragging his feet,” Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.”The Lebanese government’s commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon must be implemented. Maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify — we will not allow any threat to the residents of the north.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Hezbollah was attempting to “rearm” itself.”We expect the Lebanese government to fulfil its commitment — to disarm Hezbollah — but it is clear we will exercise our right of self-defence under the terms of ceasefire,” Netanyahu told the cabinet at its weekly meeting on Sunday.”We will not allow Lebanon to become a renewed front against us, and we will act as necessary,” he said, according to a statement issued by his office.Thousands of Israelis living near the northern border with Lebanon were forced to evacuate their homes for months after Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel following the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023.- Latest strike -That set off a more than year-long conflict that culminated in two months of open war before last year’s ceasefire was agreed.The Iran-backed militant group, which opposes Israel, has been badly weakened by the war but remains armed and financially resilient.In September 2024, Israel killed the group’s longtime chief, Hassan Nasrallah, along with many other senior leaders over the course of the war.Since the ceasefire, the United States has increased pressure on Lebanese authorities to disarm the group, a move opposed by Hezbollah and its allies.The Lebanese government has drawn up a plan to impose a state monopoly on weapons, and said the army has begun implementing it, starting in the country’s south.Israel never stopped carrying out air strikes in Lebanon in spite of the truce — usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah positions — and has stepped up the attacks in recent days.On Thursday, Israeli ground troops carried out a deadly raid into southern Lebanon, prompting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to order the army to confront such incursions.Aoun had called for talks with Israel in mid-October, after US President Donald Trump helped broker a ceasefire in Gaza.But Aoun later accused Israel of responding to his offer by intensifying its strikes, the latest of which killed four people in Nabatiyeh district on Saturday, according to the Lebanese health ministry.- ‘Our enemy’ -The official Lebanese National News Agency reported that the Israeli army hit a car “with a guided missile”.The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying it killed a member of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force in southern Lebanon.”The terrorist was involved in transferring weapons and in efforts to reestablish Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon,” the military said, adding three other members of the group were also killed.The previous day, it had announced the killing of a “Hezbollah maintenance official,” who it said was working to restore the movement’s infrastructure.Hundreds of people gathered in Nabatiyeh on Sunday to pay tribute to the Hezbollah members killed.Participants threw flower petals onto the coffins, draped in the Hezbollah flag, chanting: “Death to Israel, death to America.” “This is the price that southern Lebanon pays every day,” Rana Hamed, the mother of one of the five men killed, told AFP. “We have known that Israel has been our enemy for decades.”

A young man from one of the towns outlying the western Sudanese city of El-Fasher, Hussein was one of hundreds of men and boys captured and held by paramilitary forces that have overrun the area. “We were rounded up and taken,” he told AFP on Sunday, explaining how he and roughly 200 other young men were detained for days by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters in Garni, 25 kilometres northwest of El-Fasher, after they tried to flee. “They hit us with sticks and called us ‘slaves’,” said Hussein, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisal.  The RSF, at war with Sudan’s army since April 2023, seized the strategic city of El-Fasher one week ago, pushing the military out of its last stronghold in the region after an 18-month siege marked by starvation and bombardment. Since the takeover, reports have emerged of executions, sexual violence, looting, attacks on aid workers and abductions in and around El-Fasher, where communications remain largely cut off.Hussein said as well as being beaten and insulted, he and his fellow detainees were given only one meal a day. “They locked us inside a school building. After four days, they released some of us, but every day they brought in new people,” he said.  Darfur is home to several non-Arab ethnic groups, who form the majority of the population and have long been targeted by Arab militias. The RSF traces its origins to the Janjaweed, a predominantly Arab militia accused of genocide in Darfur two decades ago. Reports since El-Fasher’s fall have raised fears of a return to similar atrocities.- ‘Alive or dead’ -The UN said more than 65,000 people have fled El-Fasher, including around 5,000 to nearby Tawila, but tens of thousands remain trapped. Before the final assault, roughly 260,000 people lived in the city. “Where are all the missing people who have already survived months of famine and violence in El-Fasher?” asked Michel Olivier Lacharité, head of emergencies for Doctors Without Borders (MSF). The numbers of new arrivals “don’t add up”, he said, while accounts of large-scale atrocities are mounting. Satellite imagery analysed by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab on Friday showed activity consistent with displaced people in RSF-controlled Garni. The lab identified “multiple objects that measure approximately 2 metres x 3 metres” at a separate facility that may have been used as a school. Among those detained was Abbas al-Sadek, a lecturer at El-Fasher University. One of his relatives, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, said that before his disappearance, the lecturer sent a short video pleading with a colleague to transfer $900 to a bank account.In a video, seen by AFP, Sadek is heard to say: “This money is worth my life and they gave me a short time — just 10 minutes.” The money is believed to have been a ransom payment, the relative said. Sadek was later released and is now on his way to Tawila.Many others remain unaccounted for. Zahra, a mother of five who is sheltering in Tawila and also asked to be identified by her first name, told AFP that RSF fighters took her two sons, aged 16 and 20. “They finally let the younger one go, but I don’t know if Mohammed is alive or dead,” she said, referring to her oldest son. – ‘Everyone is looking for someone’ -On the road to Garni, Mohamed, a father of four, described seeing “dead bodies and wounded people left behind because their families couldn’t carry them”. “The RSF robbed us and stopped the young men travelling with us. We don’t know what happened to them.”Another survivor, Adam, said RSF fighters detained him in Garni, accusing him of being a soldier after seeing the blood of his two sons, aged 17 and 21, on his clothes. “They killed my sons in front of my eyes,” he said. Adam was released after hours of interrogation, but he said many others remain in captivity. Witnesses told MSF that detainees were separated by gender, age, and ethnic identity, with many still held for ransom. One described “horrific scenes” in which prisoners were crushed under vehicles.In Tawila, MSF coordinator Sylvain Penicaud said many are traumatised and searching for missing relatives. “Everyone is looking for someone,” he told AFP. He added that many who fled said they were targeted because of the colour of their skin. “For me, the most terrifying part,” he said, “was hearing how people were hunted while running for their lives; attacked simply for being black.”Both the RSF and the army have faced war crimes accusations during the conflict. The United States has previously determined that the RSF committed genocide in Darfur.