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Israel marked the second anniversary of the October 7 attack on Tuesday, as Hamas and Israeli negotiators held indirect talks aimed at ending the war in Gaza under a US-proposed peace plan.Two years ago to the day, at the close of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, Hamas-led militants launched the deadliest attack on Israel in the country’s history, sparking a huge retaliatory offensive in Gaza.The attack shocked the world, with Palestinian fighters breaching the Gaza-Israel border, and storming southern Israeli communities and a desert music festival with gunfire, rockets and grenades.It resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Militants also took 251 people hostage into Gaza, of whom 47 remain captive, including 25 the Israeli military says are dead.On Tuesday, senior Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum called the October 7 attack a “historic response” to Israel’s bid to “eradicate the Palestinian cause”.He also said Hamas was working to “surmount all obstacles” to sealing a deal in Egypt.Two years on from the October 7 attack, global pressure to end the war has escalated massively, with much of Gaza flattened, a UN-declared famine unfolding and Israeli hostage families still longing for their loved ones’ return.A UN probe last month accused Israel of genocide in Gaza while rights groups have accused Hamas of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the October 7 attack. Both sides reject the allegations.Last week, US President Donald Trump unveiled a 20-point peace plan calling for a ceasefire, the release of all the hostages, Hamas’s disarmament and a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.The plan received positive responses from both Israel and Hamas and prompted talks in Egypt, with negotiators beginning indirect discussions on Monday.According to two Palestinian sources close to the Hamas negotiating team, the talks were resuming on Tuesday in the Red Sea town of Sharm El-Sheikh.On Wednesday, Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will join the talks, according to Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.”The primary guarantee of success at this stage is US President Trump himself… even if it comes to a point to require him imposing a vision,” he said.- ‘She’s with me’ -In Israel, dozens of relatives and friends of those killed at the Nova music festival lit candles and held a minute’s silence at the site of the attack, where militants killed more than 370 people and seized dozens of hostages.Orit Baron, whose daughter Yuval was killed at the festival with her fiance Moshe Shuva, told AFP that October 7 was a “black” day for her family.”Now it’s two years. And I’m here to be with her, because this is the last time that she was alive,” the 57-year-old mother said at the site of the attack, adding she felt “that right now she’s with me here”.Another ceremony was due in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, where weekly rallies have kept up calls for the captives’ release.”Release the hostages, unconditionally and immediately,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.”Put an end to the hostilities in Gaza, Israel and the region now. Stop making civilians pay with their lives and their futures.”- ‘Now, not tomorrow’ -Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 67,160 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.Their data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but indicates that over half of the dead are women and children.”I don’t know when this war will end. My dream is for the war to end now, not tomorrow,” said Abeer Abu Said, a 21-year-old in Gaza who lost seven family members in the war.”I don’t trust anyone — from the Israeli negotiators or even Hamas — they all lie to us. Negotiations for the sake of negotiations, while we die every minute.”In Egypt’s resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, mediators were shuttling between Israeli and Hamas delegations under tight security.Egypt’s Abdelatty said that negotiations were aimed at implementing a “first phase” of the agreement, “to create conditions for the release of the hostages, the access for aid, and the release of Palestinian prisoners”.”This, therefore, requires the redeployment of Israeli forces so that we can work to implement this phase,” he added. Trump has urged negotiators to “move fast” to end the war, but Israeli strikes continued on Tuesday, killing four people according to Gaza’s civil defence agency — a rescue force operating under Hamas’s authority — and a local hospital.Qatar, a key mediator in the conflict, said Israel should already have ceased fire under Trump’s plan.”It was supposed to actually cease fire if the statements made by the prime minister there regarding adherence to the Trump plan were true,” Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari told reporters in Doha.Trump told Newsmax TV that “I think we’re very, very close to having a deal… I think there’s a lot of goodwill being shown now. It’s pretty amazing actually”.Israeli military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir has warned that if the negotiations fail, the military will “return to fighting” in Gaza.burs-jd/acc/ser

Two years after Hamas gunmen attacked the Nova festival in southern Israel, the desert site stands as both grave and shrine, where the living come to mourn the dead.More than 370 revellers were massacred when Palestinian militants crossed from Gaza into Israel in the early hours of October 7, 2023, attacking the music festival and several nearby communities.On Tuesday at dawn, dozens of relatives returned to the site, embracing one another and mourning the dead, an AFP correspondent reported.Tears streamed down mourners’ faces as they turned toward photographs of loved ones — wedding portraits, holiday snapshots, dancing scenes and countless smiling selfies — most of them young, with their years of birth and death inscribed beneath.At 6:29 am (0329 GMT) — the precise time when Hamas launched its unprecedented attack — the small crowd observed a minute of silence.Orit Baron’s 25-year-old daughter Yuval was among those killed.”This is how we lived for two years. It’s the worst feeling in the world,” said Baron, recalling the evening before the attack, when she and Yuval had been laughing together in the kitchen.Although she lives more than 100 kilometres (62 miles) away, Baron often returns to this patch of the Negev desert, where the former festival dance floor now resembles an open-air cemetery.Tall metal poles stand like gravestones, each bearing a portrait of someone killed or taken hostage in the Hamas assault.At their base bloom wild anemones — red desert flowers — which symbolise renewal in Israel’s south, alongside children’s drawings and small Israeli flags.- Like ‘yesterday’ -Now 57, Baron has stopped working to devote herself to preserving her daughter’s memory.Yuval had just bought her wedding dress and died beside her fiance, 33-year-old Moshe Shuva.”I think it’s very important that people will know from the first place the real stories, not like what they read or heard or something like that,” said Baron.As she carefully cleaned Yuval and Moshe’s memorial and arranged fresh flowers, others lit candles or kissed photographs of their loved ones.Two young men, who had arrived before dawn, rolled joints while listening to electronic music.At 6:29 am, they turned off the music and observed the minute of silence.”Three of our beloved friends unfortunately died here,” Alon Musnikov, 28, who survived the attack, told AFP.”And today… two years after the incident… we still (can’t) believe it really happened,” Musnikov said.On that day, Musnikov was among a group of 10 festivalgoers. Only seven returned home alive.”We live the trauma every day… it feels as if it happened yesterday,” the law student said, his face tense.- ‘Inexcusable’ -In the distance, the muffled echo of artillery and explosions drifted from the Gaza Strip.”I don’t hear it. The first time that I was here, it was very frightening, but now, I don’t feel anything,” Baron said.Karen Shaarabany, whose 21-year-old daughter Sivan was killed, said she heard explosions each time she visited the site.”Honestly, in a way we like it,” said Shaarabany, 57.”Obviously, I would like it (the Gaza war) to be finished, but so long as it’s not finished, I don’t want calm.”Why should they have the calm? Why should their (lives) be calm?”She recalled, minute by minute, the ordeal of Sivan and her four friends, who tried to flee the festival site as it came under attack but were forced to turn back.Shaarabany remembers every message her daughter sent that morning — the first at 6:45 am, reading: “Everything is fine.”The last message came at 8:10: “They’re shooting at us. We’re hiding. I’m scared.”Sivan had attended the festival with four friends.Only one returned alive, Shaarabany said, gently brushing the dust from the memorials of the four young women who died.”What happened here is inexcusable,” she said, holding back tears.

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Torrential rains that triggered deadly landslides and floods in India’s Darjeeling region also destroyed swathes of premier tea estates, officials said Tuesday.The deluge wiped out around five percent of Darjeeling’s renowned tea gardens, delivering a heavy blow in a district that has become synonymous with the leaf itself.”The flood has dealt a massive blow to …

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged students to skip pro-Palestinian protests planned for the second anniversary on Tuesday of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack in Israel, suggesting they were disrespectful.Students from several London universities were due to walk out of classes at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT) before marching through the centre of the British capital.Rallies or events including vigils were also planned in other UK cities, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sheffield and Manchester, where an attack outside a synagogue on Thursday left two people dead — one killed in the attack, the other dying after suffering a fatal gunshot, likely from armed police officers.Writing in the Times newspaper, Starmer alleged that regular pro-Palestinian protests have been used by some as a “despicable excuse to attack British Jews for something over which they have absolutely no responsibility”.He called that “a total loss of empathy and humanity”.Citing Tuesday’s planned protests, Starmer wrote: “This is not who we are as a country.”It’s un-British to have so little respect for others. And that’s before some of them decide to start chanting hatred towards Jewish people all over again.”The Jewish Bloc for Palestine said on Saturday the government was trying “to weaponise the fear and grief of our community by resurrecting a slur — that those protesting for Palestine represent a danger to Jews”.In a separate statement marking the anniversary, Starmer said the past two years had seen “rising antisemitism” in the UK, including the car ramming and stabbing attack in Manchester, which took place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.”This is a stain on who we are, and this country will always stand tall and united against those who wish harm and hatred upon Jewish communities,” said the British leader.Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Militants also seized 251 hostages, 47 of whom are still in Gaza. Of those, the Israeli military says 25 are dead.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 67,160 Palestinians over the last two years, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.”Since that awful day, so many have endured a living nightmare,” Starmer said, vowing to continue efforts to bring home British hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.The prime minister, who made the landmark move for the UK to recognise a state of Palestine last month alongside other allies, welcomed the US plan “towards peace in the Middle East” in his statement.Pro-Palestinian demonstrations went ahead over the weekend in Britain, despite pleas by the government for protesters to refrain from gathering following the Manchester attack.Activist group Defend Our Juries said calling for an end to pro-Palestinian protests following the Manchester attack were “wrongly conflating the actions of the Israeli state with all Jews”.”Jewish people around the world are not responsible for Israel’s crimes and there are many Jewish people who do not support the actions of the Israeli state,” DOJ’s Zoe Cohen said on Saturday.Separately, about 3,000 people gathered in central London on Sunday for a commemorative event to mark the October 7 anniversary, waving Israeli and Union Jack flags and holding posters of hostages.