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Hamas says Israeli troops sticking point in truce talks as Gaza pounded

Hamas on Thursday said it opposes any ceasefire deal that includes a large Israeli military presence in Gaza, after offering to release some hostages and as the civil defence agency reported scores killed across the Palestinian territory.The Islamist militant group said late Wednesday that it had agreed to release 10 people seized in its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.Both sides have been holding indirect talks in Qatar since Sunday to agree a temporary truce and the United States says it is hopeful that a 60-day halt can be secured in the coming days.But Hamas said disagreements over the free flow of aid into Gaza and Israel’s military withdrawal were sticking points, as were its demands for “real guarantees” for a lasting peace.Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told AFP on Thursday: “We cannot accept the perpetuation of the occupation of our land and the surrender of our people to isolated enclaves under the control of the occupation army (Israel).”This is what the negotiating delegation is presenting to the occupation so far in the current round of negotiations in Doha.”Hamas was particularly opposed to Israeli control over Rafah, on the border with Egypt, and the so-called Morag Corridor between the southern city and Khan Yunis, he added.Israel announced earlier this year that the army was seizing large areas in Gaza and incorporating them into buffer zones cleared of their inhabitants.Naim also said the group wanted an end to the current delivery of aid by a US- and Israel-backed group, a system which has seen scores killed while seeking handouts. On Thursday, eight children were among 17 killed in an Israeli strike outside a medical clinic in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, the civil defence agency said.Rabih Torbay, the head of US medical charity Project Hope, which runs the facility, called it “a blatant violation of humanitarian law, and a stark reminder that no one and no place is safe in Gaza, even as ceasefire talks continue”.Hamas called it “an atrocious crime”.Israel’s military said it had struck a Hamas militant in the city who had infiltrated Israel during the 2023 attack and that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals”.- Unanswered questions -Hamas has given no timeline for the release of hostages or indications about the return of the bodies of nine detainees that Israel says have died in captivity.Its announcement came as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrapped up a visit to Washington, which included a meeting between Israeli, US and Qatari representatives.That meeting on Tuesday “aimed to progress the negotiations and support the ongoing talks in Doha”, an official with knowledge of the discussions told AFP.Qatar, with fellow mediators the United States and Egypt, has brokered back-and-forth talks for a truce since the earliest days of the war but indirect talks have failed to bring about a durable end to hostilities.Netanyahu, under pressure at home to end the war as military casualties increase, has been uncompromising in his bid to crush Hamas and neutralise it as a security threat to Israel.But after two high-profile meetings with Donald Trump, he indicated that a temporary truce deal could be on the horizon, echoing the US president’s own optimism that a deal can be struck soon.- Blood and screams -In Gaza itself, there was no let-up in casualties on Thursday, with the civil defence agency reporting at least 52 people killed in Israeli strikes and shooting.In Deir el-Balah, Yousef Al-Aydi, said those in the queue for nutritional supplements heard a drone approaching, then an explosion.”The ground shook beneath our feet and everything around us turned into blood and deafening screams,” he added.Overall, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 57,762 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the start of the conflict.Hamas’s attacks on border communities in Israel that sparked the war led to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.A total of 251 hostages were seized in the attack. Forty-nine are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

Ocalan: founder of the Kurdish militant PKK who authored its end

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is an icon to many Kurds but a “terrorist” to many within wider Turkish society.After a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that resulted in more than 40,000 deaths, the PKK on Friday will begin laying down its arms, two months after ending its armed struggle. The move came after a historic call by Ocalan in February for his fighters to lay down their weapons and disband.The 76-year-old is an inmate on the Imrali prison island near Istanbul, where he has been serving life in solitary confinement since 1999. But since October, when Turkey moved to reset ties with the PKK, Ocalan has received regular visits by lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party, as well as an increasing number of family visits.And he is now leading efforts to switch from armed conflict to a democratic political struggle for the rights of Turkey’s Kurdish minority. “I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons. And I call on you to put this principle into practice,” he said in a video address on Wednesday. – Public enemy number one -For many Turks, Ocalan — who founded the PKK in 1978 and embodies the Kurdish rebellion  — is public enemy number one. A Marxist-inspired group, the PKK began an insurgency in 1984, demanding independence and later broader autonomy in Turkey’s mostly Kurdish southeast. It was quickly blacklisted as a “terror” organisation by Ankara, Washington, Brussels and many other Western countries and institutions.Attitudes began shifting in October when ultra-nationalist MHP leader Devlet Bahceli, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, offered Ocalan an olive branch if he would renounce violence.Ocalan sent back a message saying he was indeed willing and was the only one who could shift the Kurdish question “from an arena of conflict and violence to one of law and politics”.Six weeks later, Syrian rebels overthrew ruler Bashar al-Assad, upending the regional balance of power and thrusting Turkey’s complex relationship with the Kurds into the spotlight.- From village life to militancy -Seen as the world’s largest stateless people, the Kurds were left without a country when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I. Although most live in Turkey, where they make up around a fifth of the population, the Kurds are also spread across Syria, Iraq and Iran.Ocalan was born into a mixed Turkish-Kurdish peasant family in Omerli, a village in Turkey’s southeast on April 4, 1949. One of six siblings, his mother tongue is Turkish. He became a left-wing activist while studying politics at university in Ankara and set up the PKK in 1978.Six years later, Ocalan oversaw its shift to armed struggle, then spent years on the run.He fled to Syria, from where he continued the struggle, until friction between Damascus and Ankara forced him on the run again in 1998. Moving from Russia to Italy, then Greece in search of a haven, he ended up at the Greek consulate in Kenya, where US agents got wind of his presence and tipped off Ankara.Turkish agents then snatched him in an operation fit for a Hollywood film on February 15, 1999.Sentenced to death, he escaped the gallows when Turkey began abolishing capital punishment in 2002, living out the rest of his days in isolation on Imrali.For many Kurds, he is a hero whom they refer to as “Apo” (uncle). But Turks often call him “bebek katili” (baby killer), for the PKK’s ruthless tactics, which included bombing civilian targets.- Jailed but still leading -With Ocalan’s arrest, Ankara thought it had decapitated the PKK.But even from his cell, Ocalan continued to lead the group, ordering a ceasefire that lasted from 1999 until 2004.In 2005, he ordered followers to renounce the idea of an independent Kurdish state and campaign for autonomy in their respective countries.Tentative moves to resolve Turkey’s “Kurdish problem” began in 2008 but made little headway.Ocalan was soon involved in another round of unofficial talks in 2013 when Erdogan was prime minister. But that collapsed in July 2015, sparking one of the deadliest chapters in the conflict and triggering a string of punishing Turkish military operations.Although the violence eventually tailed off, there were no further efforts to resume dialogue until last year.”The PKK movement, its pursuit of a separate state and its underlying strategy of war for national liberation has ended,” Ocalan said on Wednesday in a speech that dismissed the idea of his own release as unimportant. “He makes clear his own freedom has little importance, contradicting the conditions laid down by the PKK, which demanded his release so it could complete the process,” Boris James, a French expert on Kurdish history, told AFP.”He remains the leader, but not in any operational sense. He’s positioning himself more as a guide for the movement.” 

Shein faces 150-mn-euro fine in France

E-commerce giant Shein faces a possible 150-million-euro ($175-million) fine in France for failing to properly get consent to track users on the internet.The regulator, the CNIL, faulted the fast-fashion retailer for using trackers called cookies that enable for targeted advertising to users without their approval as required in Europe, or for using a confusing method …

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Iran threats in UK ‘significantly increased’: Intel watchdog

A UK parliamentary committee on Thursday blamed Iran for at least 15 attempts to kill or kidnap British-based individuals since 2022, saying the threat from Iran had “significantly increased”.London’s response has been too focused on “crisis management”, said parliament’s intelligence and security committee, with concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme dominating their attention too much.Tehran swiftly issued a “categorical rejection of the unfounded, politically motivated and hostile allegations”.The committee’s claims were “baseless, irresponsible, and reflective of a broader pattern of distortion intended to malign Iran’s legitimate regional and national interests”, said its London embassy.The report comes after growing alarm in Britain at alleged Iranian targeting of dissidents, media organisations and journalists in the UK, including accusations of physical attacks. Iran in March became the first country to be placed on an enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which aims to boost Britain’s national security against covert foreign influences.It requires all persons working inside the country for Iran, its intelligence services or the Revolutionary Guard to register on a new list or face jail.”Iran poses a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals, and UK interests,” Kevan Jones, chairman of the watchdog committee, said in the report’s conclusions.”Iran has a high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity and its intelligence services are ferociously well-resourced with significant areas of asymmetric strength.”Jones said it bolstered this through proxy groups, “including criminal networks, militant and terrorist organisations, and private cyber actors” to allow for deniability.- ‘Willing and able’ -His committee’s report said that while Iran’s UK activity “appears to be less strategic and on a smaller scale than Russia and China”, it “should not be underestimated”.The physical threat posed had “significantly increased” in pace and volume, and was “focused acutely on dissidents and other opponents of the regime” as well as Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK, it said.”The Iranian Intelligence Services have shown that they are willing and able — often through third-party agents — to attempt assassination within the UK, and kidnap from the UK,” the report said.”There have been at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022.”Similarly, security minister Dan Jarvis said in March Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service had tallied 20 Iran-backed plots “presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents”.The watchdog committee took evidence for two years from August 2021 for its report, a period which saw Tehran implicated in a plot to kill two London-based Iran International television anchors.In March last year one of the Persian-language outlet’s journalists was stabbed outside his London home. Two Romanian men have been charged in relation to the attack and face extradition to the UK to stand trial. The counter-terrorism unit of London’s Metropolitan Police led the investigation. Iran’s charge d’affaires in the UK has said that the Tehran authorities “deny any link” to the incident.