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Israeli forces were targeting “terrorist infrastructure” in southern Gaza, the military said Friday, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced hope that an agreement with Hamas could be reached within days for a pause in the 21-month war.Negotiators from Israel and the Palestinian militant group have been locked in indirect talks in Qatar since Sunday to try to agree a temporary ceasefire.Netanyahu said a lasting truce could follow, but only if Hamas lays down its arms and is no longer able to govern or operate in the Gaza Strip.On the ground, Gaza’s civil defence agency reported a fresh wave of Israeli strikes, including one that killed five people at a school building sheltering displaced Palestinians.Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the agency and other parties.In the south of the territory, a witness said there were ongoing attacks and widespread devastation, with Israeli tanks seen near the city of Khan Yunis.”The situation remains extremely difficult in the area — intense gunfire, intermittent air strikes, artillery shelling and ongoing bulldozing and destruction of displacement camps and agricultural land” south of Khan Yunis, he added.Israel’s military said in a statement that it was operating in the Khan Yunis area against “terrorist infrastructure sites, both above and below ground”.In Qatar, sticking points remain in the talks, both sides said.Hamas, whose cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 sparked the war, has said that as part of a truce deal it was willing to release 10 of the hostages taken that day.In an interview with US outlet Newsmax broadcast on Thursday, Netanyahu said that would leave 10 living hostages still in captivity.”I hope we can complete it in a few days,” he added of the initial ceasefire agreement and hostage release.”We’ll probably have a 60-day ceasefire, get the first batch out, then use the 60-day ceasefire to negotiate an end to this.”- Unresolved issues -Netanyahu, who was in Washington this week and met US President Donald Trump twice to discuss the ceasefire proposals, is under pressure at home to end the war because of mounting military casualties.Trump is looking to secure a deal while his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has said it could be concluded by the end of this week.On Thursday, Netanyahu said Israel was ready to start talks for a lasting deal with Hamas when a temporary ceasefire is in place.But he said the Islamist militants must first give up their weapons and their hold on the Palestinian territory.Failure to do so on Israel’s terms would lead to further conflict, Netanyahu said.Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has also said the Doha talks could take “a few more days”, with unresolved issues including agreement on the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for hostages.Hamas has said it wants “real guarantees” on a lasting truce as well as the free flow of aid to help Gaza’s population of more than two million people, who are facing dire humanitarian conditions.Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told AFP on Thursday that his group wanted Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza and would not accept any Israeli moves to herd Palestinians into “isolated enclaves”.Hamas’s October 2023 attack led to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.Out of 251 hostages seized in the attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.At least 57,762 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

PKK fighters were to begin laying down their weapons at a ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan Friday, two months after the Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.The disarmament ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from armed insurgency to democratic politics, as part of a broader effort to draw a line under one of the region’s longest-running conflicts.Founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK took up arms in 1984, beginning a string of bloody attacks on Turkish soil that sparked a conflict that cost more than 40,000 lives.But more than four decades on, the PKK in May announced its dissolution, saying it would pursue a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with a historic call by Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence in Turkey since 1999.Friday’s ceremony was to take place during the morning at an undisclosed location in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan — where most of the PKK’s fighters have been holed up for the past decade — near the northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah.Although there were limited details about the ceremony, a PKK source told AFP around 30 fighters would destroy their weapons and then return to the mountains.”As a gesture of goodwill, a number of PKK fighters, who took part in fighting Turkish forces in recent years, will destroy or burn their weapons in a ceremony,” a PKK commander told AFP on July 1, speaking on condition of anonymity.But tensions rose ahead of the ceremony as two drones were shot down overnight near Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga bases, one in Sulaimaniyah, and the other in Kirkuk to the west, according to officials who did not say was behind the attacks. No casualties were reported.- ‘Power of politics’ -The start of the PKK’s disarmament is a key step in the months-long indirect negotiations between Ocalan and Ankara that began in October with the blessing of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and have been facilitated by Turkey’s pro-Kurdish DEM party.Among those expected to attend the ceremony were several DEM lawmakers, who arrived in Sulaimaniyah on Thursday, and a handful of journalists.It was not clear whether the ceremony would be broadcast live.”I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons. And I urge you to put this principle into practice,” Ocalan said in a video message released on Wednesday, pledging that the disarmament process would be “implemented swiftly”.Erdogan said peace efforts with the Kurds would gain momentum after the PKK began laying down its weapons.”The process will gain a little more speed when the terrorist organisation starts to implement its decision to lay down arms,” he said at the weekend.”We hope this auspicious process will end successfully as soon as possible, without mishaps or sabotage attempts,” he added on Wednesday.In recent months, the PKK has taken several historic steps, starting with a ceasefire and culminating in its formal dissolution announced on May 12.The shift followed an appeal on February 27 by Ocalan, who has spent the past 26 years in solitary confinement on Imrali prison island near Istanbul. 

China’s economy is expected to have expanded more than five percent in the second quarter thanks to strong exports, analysts say, but they warned Donald Trump’s trade war could cause a sharp slowdown in the final six months.The world’s second-largest economy is fighting a multi-front battle to sustain growth, a challenge made more difficult by …

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US President Donald Trump has announced a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian imports as he accused the country’s leftist leadership of orchestrating a “witch hunt” against his right-wing ally, former leader Jair Bolsonaro.In a letter Wednesday to counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Trump insisted that Bolsonaro’s trial — for allegedly plotting a coup to …

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