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Israel said the remains it received on Sunday from Hamas were those of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, an Israeli officer killed more than a decade ago in the 2014 Gaza war.Goldin was the 24th deceased hostage whose remains have been returned by Hamas since the start of the ceasefire on October 10 that has halted the latest war in Gaza, which broke out in October 2023.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said forensic experts had confirmed the remains were of Goldin.”Today, we are united in having finally brought him back to his parents and his family to be laid to rest in Israel,” Netanyahu said in a video statement posted on X, holding a photograph of Goldin.”It’s a relief. It’s time for this family to finally be able to mourn,” Judith Touati, a resident of Ramla in central Israel told AFP.”In Israel, no one is forgotten, and we do everything to bring everyone home, even after 11 years.”The return of the Goldin’s remains in particular marked a deeply symbolic moment for Israel — where the military’s creed of leaving no soldier behind is treated as sacred — closing a painful 11-year chapter that has haunted both his family and the nation.Several friends of Goldin’s family and his former comrades had gathered at the forensic centre where his remains were verified.Rachel Zinkin, a friend of the family, told AFP that it would now be “a closure for the family and also for the Israeli society”.Nevertheless, his father, Simcha Goldin, insisted that victory for Israel in Gaza would only come once all the hostages were home.”What this war has proven is that when we fight for our soldiers, we succeed. Victory means bringing home the hostages and bringing home our soldiers to Israel”.- Killed in ambush -Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, handed over the remains earlier on Sunday, saying it had found them in a tunnel in Rafah the day before.Goldin’s body had been held in Gaza since his death. Until now, Hamas had never acknowledged his death nor possession of his remains.Israeli media reported on Saturday that Israel had allowed Hamas and Red Cross personnel to search in an area under Israeli control in Rafah to locate Goldin’s remains.Goldin, 23, was part of an Israeli unit tasked with locating and destroying Hamas tunnels when he was killed on August 1, 2014, just hours after a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire took effect.Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said Goldin had been killed in an ambush.”The terrorists emerged from a tunnel in Rafah and attacked IDF soldiers,” Bedrosian told journalists on Sunday.”Hadar was shot and killed during this Hamas attack, with terrorists dragging his body back into the tunnel.”Parts of his body were found in a tunnel soon after the incident and the family had held his funeral in his hometown Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv in August 2014.Previous efforts to retrieve his remains through prisoner swaps had failed.”The return of his (Goldin’s) body, after an 11-year delay, carries great significance,” said Israeli columnist Amos Harel in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.”It will close a painful chapter and send a message that Israel’s commitment to leaving no soldier behind remains steadfast.”- ‘We feel like hostages’ -But Gazan resident Samah Deeb, displaced from northern Gaza to a central part of the territory, remained apprehensive even as Hamas returned hostages.”We still feel like hostages to the situation,” Deeb, 33, told AFP.”The next stage of the ceasefire, which involves disarmament of Hamas and administration of the Strip worries us.”I want my children to have a dignified life, for schools and education to return, and for us to live in a proper home, not a tent or temporary shelter.”Her views were echoed by Mohammed Zamlout, another displaced Gazan.”We want Israel’s withdrawal. We want to return to our destroyed homes, begin reconstruction, rebuild infrastructure and schools, and restore life for our children,” he said.At the start of the truce, Hamas was holding 20 living hostages and the bodies of 28 deceased captives.It has since released all the living hostages and returned 24 sets of remains of the deceased in line with the ceasefire terms.In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners that had been in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds killed in Gaza.The remains of four hostages are still held in Gaza, three of them Israeli and one Thai, all of whom were seized during Hamas’s October 2023 attack.That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. The Israeli military’s retaliatory campaign has since killed 69,176 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.The ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN, does not specify the number of fighters killed within this total.

As he fled the Sudanese city of El-Fasher in terror, Hassan Osman said he saw ethnic attacks by paramilitary forces, with civilians targeted for their tribe and skin colour. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been at war with the army since April 2023, captured the last military stronghold in western Darfur on October 26. Reports of mass killings, ethnic violence, abductions and sexual assaults have since emerged.AFP spoke to three survivors of the battle for El-Fasher, who are now seeking shelter in the nearby town of Tawila. Rights organisations have echoed fears that ethnic killings are taking place in areas under the paramilitaries’ control.An RSF officer rejected the accusations as false.Osman, a university student from El-Fasher, told AFP that paramilitary fighters singled people out according to their ethnicity. “They judge you by your tribe, your skin colour and where your family is from,” he said.”If you belong to certain tribes, they don’t ask any questions, you are killed on sight.”He said the city’s streets were “filled with bodies” when he escaped. “Some were slaughtered. Some were eaten by dogs.”Amna Haroun, from the Zaghawa African tribe, said she watched in horror as RSF fighters gunned down her husband and eldest son.”They killed them right in front of my eyes, saying, ‘We don’t want you here’,” she told AFP.- ‘Racial insults’ -The conflict in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million and triggered a hunger crisis.Both sides have been accused of committing atrocities over the course of the war.Darfur is home to several non-Arab ethnic groups, including the Zaghawa, Fur, Berti and Masalit, who 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.Between 2003 and 2008, an estimated 300,000 people were killed and nearly 2.7 million were displaced in those campaigns of ethnic violence.According to the European Union Agency for Asylum, non-Arab or African groups represent between two-thirds and three-quarters of Darfur’s population.The Zaghawa, the dominant ethnic group in El-Fasher, have been fighting alongside the army since late 2023.The group, which initially remained neutral when the war began, aligned with the military after the RSF carried out massacres against the Masalit tribe in West Darfur capital El-Geneina, killing up to 15,000 people.Osman said residents with darker skin, especially Zaghawa civilians, were subjected to “racial insults, humiliation, degradation and physical and psychological violence” as they fled El-Fasher. “If your skin is light, they might let you go,” he said. “It’s purely ethnic.”Osman, who is from the Berti tribe, said he himself was not subjected to ethnic violence because the RSF fighters’ main enmity was with the Zaghawa, who are aligned with the army.But Hussein, from the Fur tribe, said he was detained for several days with around 200 men in Garni, a town 25 kilometres (16 miles) northwest of El-Fasher, where they were beaten and insulted. “They hit us with sticks and called us ‘slaves’,” Hussein, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisal, told AFP. Osman also said RSF fighters demanded money from civilians — often hundreds of dollars — for safe passage, based on tribal identity and family origin. “They ask where your family is from and set the amount accordingly,” he said.- ‘Simply for being black’ -An RSF officer, based in El-Fasher, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media, denied the reported killings.”We did not kill civilians or kill anyone because they belong to a (certain) tribe. These are just false accusations,” the officer told AFP. After the fall of El-Fasher, the paramilitary group issued a directive to its forces instructing them to “adhere strictly to the law, rules of conduct and military discipline during wartime”, emphasising the need to ensure the “protection of civilians”.Since El-Fasher’s takeover, the United Nations and rights monitors have reported widespread atrocities, including ethnically-driven killings and abductions.UN experts said Friday they were “appalled by credible reports” of RSF executions of civilians in El-Fasher, calling them war crimes that “may amount to crimes against humanity”. They said the attacks mirrored earlier RSF campaigns in the nearby Zamzam camp — overrun by paramilitaries in April — and El-Geneina, where thousands were killed, accusing the group of targeting Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa communities “with the intent of terrorising, displacing and destroying them in whole or in part”.Sylvain Penicaud of MSF, who has been speaking to civilians fleeing El-Fasher in Tawila, told AFP that many of those fleeing said they were “targeted because of the colour of their skin”.”For me, the most terrifying part was being hunted down while they were running for their lives. Being attacked simply for being black,” Penicaud said.

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the United States on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist.Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.It’s the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts.The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May.Washington’s envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said earlier this month that Sharaa would “hopefully” sign an agreement to join the international US-led alliance against the Islamic State (IS) group.The United States plans to establish a military base near Damascus “to coordinate humanitarian aid and observe developments between Syria and Israel,” a diplomatic source in Syria told AFP.The State Department’s decision Friday to remove Sharaa from the blacklist was widely expected.State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Sharaa’s government had been meeting US demands including on working to find missing Americans and on eliminating any remaining chemical weapons.”These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime,” Pigott said.The spokesman added that the US delisting would promote “regional security and stability as well as an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process.” The Syrian interior ministry announced on Saturday that it had carried out 61 raids and made 71 arrests in a “proactive campaign to neutralise the threat” of IS, according to the official SANA news agency.It said the raids targeted locations where IS sleeper cells remain, including Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Damascus.After his arrival, Sharaa met with representatives from Syrian organizations in Washington, according to his country’s official media.The Syrian foreign minister posted a social media video, filmed before Sharaa’s departure, of him playing basketball with CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper and Kevin Lambert, the head of the international anti-IS operation in Iraq, alongside the caption “work hard, play harder.”- Transformation -Sharaa’s Washington trip comes after his landmark visit to the United Nations in September — his first time on US soil — where the ex-jihadist became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN General Assembly in New York.On Thursday, Washington led a vote by the Security Council to remove UN sanctions against him.Formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was delisted as a terrorist group by Washington as recently as July.Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their violent past and present a moderate image more tolerable to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.The White House visit “is further testament to the US commitment to the new Syria and a hugely symbolic moment for the country’s new leader, who thus marks another step in his astonishing transformation from militant leader to global statesman,” International Crisis Group US program director Michael Hanna said.Sharaa is expected to seek funds for Syria, which faces significant challenges in rebuilding after 13 years of civil war.In October, the World Bank put a “conservative best estimate” of the cost of rebuilding Syria at $216 billion. 

Israel said it had received on Sunday the remains of a hostage that Hamas said were those of Israeli officer Hadar Goldin, killed more than a decade ago in the 2014 Gaza war.Israeli forensic experts were determining the identity of the remains after they were brought to Israel.If confirmed, Goldin would be the 24th deceased hostage whose remains have been returned by Hamas since the start of the ceasefire on October 10 that has halted the latest war in Gaza, which broke out in October 2023.”Israel has received, via the Red Cross, the coffin of a fallen hostage that was transferred to IDF and Shin Bet personnel inside the Gaza Strip,” the prime minister’s office said.Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said earlier it had found Goldin’s remains in a tunnel in Rafah the day before.Goldin’s body has been held in Gaza since his death. Until now, Hamas had never acknowledged his death nor possession of his remains.Israeli media reported on Saturday that Israel had allowed Hamas and Red Cross personnel to search in an area under Israeli control in Rafah to locate Goldin’s remains.”Lieutenant Hadar Goldin fell in heroic combat during Operation Protective Edge” in 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.”His body was abducted by Hamas, which refused to return him throughout this entire period.”- Killed in ambush -Goldin, 23, was part of an Israeli unit tasked with locating and destroying Hamas tunnels when he was killed on August 1, 2014, just hours after a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire took effect.Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said Goldin had been killed in an ambush.”The terrorists emerged from a tunnel in Rafah and attacked IDF soldiers,” Bedrosian told journalists on Sunday.”Hadar was shot and killed during this Hamas attack, with terrorists dragging his body back into the tunnel.”Previous efforts to retrieve his remains through prisoner swaps had failed.”The return of his (Goldin’s) body, after an 11-year delay, carries great significance,” said Israeli columnist Amos Harel in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.”It will close a painful chapter and send a message that Israel’s commitment to leaving no soldier behind remains steadfast.”Samah Deeb, displaced from northern Gaza to central Gaza, remained apprehensive even as Hamas returned hostages.”We still feel like hostages to the situation,” Deeb, 33, told AFP.”The next stage of the ceasefire, which involves disarmament of Hamas and administration of the Strip worries us.”I want my children to have a dignified life, for schools and education to return, and for us to live in a proper home, not a tent or temporary shelter.”Her views were echoed by Mohammed Zamlout, another displaced Gazan.”We want Israel’s withdrawal. We want to return to our destroyed homes, begin reconstruction, rebuild infrastructure and schools, and restore life for our children,” he said.Israel listed Goldin among the deceased hostages whose remains it is seeking to repatriate under the ongoing US-brokered ceasefire deal to end the latest Gaza war.At the start of the truce, Hamas was holding 20 living hostages and the bodies of 28 deceased captives.It has since released all the living hostages and returned 23 remains of the deceased in line with the ceasefire terms.In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners that had been in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds killed in Gaza.Apart from Goldin, four hostage bodies — three Israeli and one Thai — remain to be returned from Gaza, all of them seized during the October 2023 attack.- Hostage buried -Meanwhile, the family of Staff Sergeant Itay Chen laid him to rest on Sunday after his body was handed over just days ago.Chen, a dual Israeli-US national, was working at the border with the Gaza Strip when Hamas and its allies attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.The Israeli military announced his death in March 2024, saying he had died in combat and his body had been taken to Gaza.”In those harrowing moments, Itay revealed the quiet heroism that defines true courage, the willingness to face unthinkable danger so that others may live,” US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said in a video eulogy released by Chen’s family.Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. The Israeli military’s retaliatory campaign has since killed 69,176 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.The ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN, does not specify the number of fighters killed within this total.