Senior US and Chinese officials on Saturday concluded the first of two days of talks aimed at resolving the trade war sparked by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, with Chinese state media calling the negotiations an “important step.”US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng for …
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Hamas’s armed wing released a video on Saturday showing two Israeli hostages alive in the Gaza Strip, with one of the two men calling to end the 19-month-long war.The pair were identified by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group as Elkana Bohbot and Yosef Haim Ohana, who were kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war.The undated three-minute video footage released by Hamas’s Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades shows one of the hostages, 36-year-old Bohbot, visibly weak and lying on the floor wrapped in a blanket.The second hostage, Ohana, 24, speaks in Hebrew urging the Israeli government to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of all remaining captives — a similar message to statements made by other hostages, likely under duress, in previous videos released by Hamas.In a statement, Bohbot’s family said that “Elkana and Yosef are crying out to be saved. While all the people of Israel hear their calls, a handful of decision-makers refuse to listen,” echoing criticism of the Israeli government for failing to bring back the hostages.”How much more can we bear? How much more can they endure? The fact that they are still there is a disgrace,” the family said.Late Saturday, Israeli demonstrators calling for the release of the hostages and an end of the war gathered outside the defence ministry headquarters in the coastal city of Tel Aviv.AFP images showed some protesters holding pictures of the hostages and placards that read “we can save the rest” and “all of them now”.- Uncertainty -Bohbot, a Colombian-Israeli, was seen bound and injured in the face in footage from the day of the Hamas attack, and his family have expressed concern about his health.Bohbot and Ohana, both abducted by Palestinian militants from the site of a music festival, are among 58 hostages held in Gaza since the 2023 attack, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.Hamas also holds the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in a 2014 war.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the fate of three hostages presumed alive was unclear, without naming them.”We know with certainty that 21 hostages are alive… and there are three others whose status, sadly, we do not know,” Netanyahu said in a video shared on his Telegram channel.Israel resumed its military offensive across the Gaza Strip on March 18, after a two-month truce that saw the release of dozens of hostages.Since the ceasefire collapsed, Hamas has released several videos of hostages, including of the two appearing in Saturday’s video.Israel says the renewed offensive aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives, although critics charge that it puts them in mortal danger.Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that at least 2,701 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,810.
The United States and Iran will hold a new round of nuclear talks Sunday in Oman ahead of a visit to the region by Donald Trump, whose key negotiator staked out an increasingly hard line on the issue of uranium enrichment.Trump, who will visit three other Gulf Arab monarchies next week, has voiced hope for reaching a deal with Tehran to avert an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear program that could ignite a wider war.Three previous rounds of talks in Oman and Rome ended with notes of optimism, with the two sides saying the atmosphere was friendly despite the countries’ four decades of enmity.But they are not believed to have gone into technical detail, and basic questions remain.Steve Witkoff, Trump’s friend who has served as his globe-trotting negotiator on issues including on Iran, had initially suggested flexibility on Tehran maintaining low-level enrichment of uranium for civilian purposes.But in an interview published Friday, Witkoff gave his clearest message yet that the Trump administration would oppose any enrichment.”An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line. No enrichment,” he told right-wing Breitbart News.”That means dismantlement, it means no weaponization, and it means that Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan — those are their three enrichment facilities — have to be dismantled,” he said.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier raised the possibility of Iran importing enriched uranium for any civilian energy.Trump in his first term withdrew from a nuclear agreement with Tehran negotiated by former president Barack Obama that allowed Iran to enrich uranium at levels well below what is needed for weapons.Many Iran watchers doubted that Iran would ever voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear program and give up all enrichment.But Iran has found itself in a weaker place over the past year. Israel has decimated Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia backed by Iran that could launch a counter-attack in any war, and Iran’s main ally in the Arab world, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, was toppled in December.Israel also struck Iranian air defenses as the two countries came openly to blows in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, which is also supported by Iran’s clerical state.- ‘Blow ’em up nicely’ -Trump himself has acknowledged tensions in his policy on Iran, saying at the start of his second term that hawkish advisors were pushing him to step up pressure reluctantly.In an interview Thursday, Trump said he wanted “total verification” that Iran’s contested nuclear work is shut down but through diplomacy.”I’d much rather make a deal” than see military action, Trump told the conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.”There are only two alternatives — blow ’em up nicely or blow ’em up viciously,” Trump said.Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Oman, which has been mediating, had proposed Sunday as the date and both sides had accepted.”Negotiations are moving ahead and naturally, the more we advance, the more consultations we have, and the more time the delegations need to examine the issues,” he said in a video carried by Iranian media.”But what’s important is that we are moving forward so that we gradually get into the details,” Araghchi said.The Trump administration has kept piling on sanctions despite the talks, angering Iran. On Thursday, the United States imposed sanctions on another refinery in China, the main market for Iranian oil.Since Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era deal, the United States has used its power to try to stop all other countries from buying Iranian oil.
