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Thousands of grieving Israelis gathered in the Tel Aviv plaza dubbed Hostages Square on Thursday, standing or sitting in silent mourning, after Hamas handed over the bodies of four hostages. The Palestinian militants had delivered the black coffins they said contained the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two young boys, Kfir and Ariel — who became symbols of the ordeal that has gripped Israel since the Gaza war began with the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.It was the first handover of bodies by Hamas under a fragile ceasefire that has seen living hostages exchanged for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.For this macabre first, actors, singers and hostage relatives had gathered on the square that became a symbol of the Israeli movement to bring the hostages back home.”In two days, we’ll receive six live hostages, and then four more bodies, it will be the end of the first phase but we’d like them all to come back”, actor Lior Ashkenazy said on stage shortly after thousands of attendees observed a minute of silence for the four deceased hostages returned on Thursday.”It’s a national mourning, we feel that they (the Bibas mother and sons) are part of our family, we had hope until the last moment,” Gersende Grynszpan, 49, told AFP in Hostages Square.”Today is an extension of October 7,” she added.Chen Kugel, Director of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, confirmed in a statemet in the early evening that the body of veteran peace activist Oded Lifshitz, 83 at the time of his abduction, was among those returned.He said that work to identify the three other bodies was still continuing.”We received with deep sorrow the official and bitter news confirming the identification of our beloved Oded’s body,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.Earlier in the day, hundreds of tearful Israelis clutching flags had lined the route of the convoy bringing the bodies of the hostages to the forensic institute in Tel Aviv for identification.A screen in Hostages Square showed images of those still held in the Palestinian territory against a backdrop of sombre music.”This is one of the hardest days, I think, since October 7,” said museum manager Tania Coen Uzzielli, 59.”I think the feeling of personal guilt is something each of us carries — that maybe we could have done more, that maybe we didn’t do enough to prevent this tragedy.”Orange balloons symbolised the red hair of the two Bibas children, who were aged four and nine months at the time of their capture.The family became national symbols of the despair that has gripped the nation since the Hamas attack and hostage takings.- ‘Ask for forgiveness’ -Footage of the Bibas family’s abduction, filmed and broadcast by Hamas during its attack, showed them being seized from their home near the Gaza border.Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri Bibas’s husband, was abducted separately and released in a hostage-prisoner exchange on February 1.While their deaths have largely been accepted abroad as fact since Hamas said an Israeli air strike killed them early in the war, Israel had never confirmed their loss.In a video statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “enraged by the monsters of Hamas” and vowed to “eliminate” the Palestinian militants after they paraded the coffins in Gaza.The Red Cross-facilitated handover took place at a former cemetery in the south Gaza city of Khan Yunis, where four caskets were shown on a stage next to armed militants.Hundreds of Gazans had gathered to witness the ceremony. Large numbers of armed men in military fatigues and Hamas headbands stood near the stage for the ceremony, which was carefully choreographed like previous handovers of live hostages.Each coffin bore a small photograph of the deceased.Israeli President Isaac Herzog said: “The hearts of an entire nation lie in tatters.”On behalf of the State of Israel, I bow my head and ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day. Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely.”Under the first phase of the ceasefire which took effect on January 19, militants have so far freed 19 living Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners.Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during their attack. Prior to Thursday’s handover, there were 70 hostages in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.Yael Adar, whose son was killed on October 7 in kibbutz Nir Oz, told the crowd in Tel Aviv he just wished for his son’s body to be returned “to end doubts on his living status”.

Eight civilians including three children were killed on Thursday when unexploded munitions ignited at a house in northwestern Syria, a war monitor and the civil defence said.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the deadly blast a day after another organisation said two-thirds of Syrians were at risk of being killed or wounded by unexploded ordnance.”The final toll in an explosion of leftover war munitions in a house” in Idlib province is “eight dead including three children, one of them an infant, and two women”, the Observatory said, adding another child was injured.Syria’s civil defence gave the same toll.An AFP correspondent saw rescue teams retrieving bodies from the rubble of the destroyed house in Al-Nayrab.Civil defence worker Mohammed Ibrahim said they had been called to the scene of an “explosion of unknown provenance”. “When teams headed to the site, they found unexploded ordnance,” he added.The Observatory said the owner of the house was a scrap dealer who collected unexploded ordnance for its metal content.Residents told AFP that the owner had stored the scrap adjacent to the house.Journalists were not allowed to approach the site for fear of further explosions.Non-governmental organisation Humanity and Inclusion had warned on Wednesday of the dangers posed by unexploded munitions left over from the devastating civil war that erupted in 2011.It said experts estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 of the roughly one million munitions used during the war had never detonated.- ‘Absolute disaster’ -It’s “an absolute disaster”, the group’s Syria programme director Danila Zizi said, adding that “more than 15 million people (are) at risk” out of a resident population of some 23 million.As hundreds of thousands of Syrians return to their homes after Islamist-led rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad in December, “urgent action is needed to mitigate the risk of accident”, the group said.According to UN figures, more than one million people have returned to their homes since Assad fled, 280,000 of them from abroad.Zizi said that the crude barrel bombs used in large numbers by Assad’s air force during the war had a “higher rate of failing” than other munitions.She said that mines planted by Islamic State group jihadists during their slow retreat in the late 2010s meant there were also “lots of booby traps that have never been really marked or mapped”.In January alone, 125 unexploded ordnance accidents were recorded in which at least 85 people were killed and 152 injured, Humanity and Inclusion said.Most of the casualties have been farmers tending their fields or flocks, or children playing outdoors, it said.

Hundreds of Chinese workers started to arrive home on Thursday after being freed from online scam centres in Myanmar, as authorities crack down on the illegal operations.Thousands of foreigners are expected to be repatriated from Myanmar in the coming weeks, starting with hundreds of Chinese nationals over the next three days.The compounds are run by …

Chinese workers from Myanmar scam centres start arriving home via Thailand Read More »

Militants on Thursday handed over the bodies of four hostages taken into Gaza during their October 7, 2023 attack, with Hamas saying they include the Bibas family — symbols of Israel’s ordeal since the Gaza war began.This is the first release of dead hostages under a fragile ceasefire which has so far seen only living captives exchanged for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.The ceremony to return the bodies of Shiri Bibas, her two young red-headed boys —- Kfir and Ariel -— and a fourth captive, Oded Lifshitz, 83 at the time of his capture, took place at a former cemetery in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis.Israel has “received the caskets of four fallen hostages”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.”Our hearts — the hearts of the entire nation — lie in tatters,” President Isaac Herzog said in a statement after the handover. He asked “forgiveness for not protecting you”.Flag-waving Israelis lined the route which a convoy carrying the bodies took from southern Israel to Tel Aviv following the transfer via the Red Cross.Among those waiting at “Hostages Square” in Tel Aviv was museum manager Tania Coen Uzzielli, 59.”This is one of the hardest days, I think, since October 7th,” she said, adding that “maybe we didn’t do enough to prevent this tragedy.”Israel’s military said the bodies would “undergo an identification procedure” at the city’s national forensic medicine institute, where onlookers wept as the convoy arrived.Ahead of the handover, Hamas and members of other armed Palestinian groups displayed four black coffins on a stage erected on the sandy patch of ground. A banner behind them depicted Netanyahu as a blood-stained vampire. Each casket bore a small photo of the deceased. White mock-up missiles nearby carried the message: “They were killed by USA bombs,” a reference to Israel’s top military supplier.- The youngest hostage -Under a cold drizzle, a militant with his face wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh scarf sat on the stage to complete documents with a Red Cross official.The coffins were loaded into Red Cross vehicles.Tahani Fayad, 40, was among the hundreds of people gathered to witness the ceremony which he called “a confirmation of the victory of the Palestinian people and proof that the occupation will not defeat us”.Buildings bombed during more than 15 months of war surrounded the site.Armed men in military fatigues and wearing Hamas headbands were ubiquitous at the ceremony — carefully choreographed as in previous hostage transfers.During their attack that triggered the Gaza war, Hamas filmed and later broadcast footage showing the Bibas family’s abduction from their home near the Gaza border.Ariel was then aged four. Kfir was the youngest hostage at just nine months old.Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri’s husband, was abducted separately and released in a previous hostage-prisoner swap on February 1.The bodies’ repatriation is part of the six-week initial phase of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which took effect on January 19.Under the first phase, militants have so far freed 19 living Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners.Of the remaining 14 Gaza hostages eligible for release under phase one, Israel says eight are dead.- Under strain -Hamas said an Israeli air strike killed the Bibas family early in the war but Israel has never confirmed the claim.Hamas and its armed wing “did everything in their power to protect the prisoners (hostages) and preserve their lives, but the barbaric and continuous bombing by the occupation prevented them from being able to save all”, the militants said in a statement.Israel and Hamas announced a deal earlier this week for the return of eight hostages’ remains in two groups this week and next, as well as the release of six living Israeli captives on Saturday.Palestinian prisoners are also to be freed in Saturday’s swap but were not part of Thursday’s handover.The ceasefire in Gaza has held despite accusations of violations on both sides.It has also been under strain from US President Donald Trump’s widely condemned idea to take control of rubble-strewn Gaza and relocate its population of more than two million Palestinians.Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has said talks will begin this week on the truce’s second phase, aiming to lay out a more permanent end to the war.Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP on Wednesday that Hamas was ready to free all remaining hostages held in Gaza in a single swap during phase two.Hamas and its allies took 251 people captive during their attack. Prior to Thursday’s handover, there were 70 hostages in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,297 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.

At least seven civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed on Thursday when unexploded munitions ignited at a house in northwestern Syria, a war monitor said.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the deadly blast a day after another organisation said two-thirds of Syrians risked being killed or wounded by unexploded ordnance.”Seven civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed when leftover munitions stored inside a house” in Idlib province exploded, the Observatory said.An AFP correspondent saw civil defence teams retrieving bodies from the rubble of the destroyed house in Al-Nayrab on the outskirts of the main northern city of Aleppo.Civil defence worker Mohammed Ibrahim said they had been called to the scene of an “explosion of unknown provenance”. “When teams headed to the site, they found unexploded ordnance,” he added.The Observatory said the owner of the house was a scrap dealer who collected unexploded ordnance for its metal content.Residents told AFP that the owner had stored the munitions adjacent to the house.Journalists were not allowed to approach the site for fear of further explosions.Non-governmental organisation Humanity and Inclusion had warned on Wednesday of the dangers posed by unexploded munitions left over from the devastating civil war that erupted in 2011.It said experts estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 of the roughly one million munitions used during the war had never detonated.- ‘Absolute disaster’ -It’s “an absolute disaster”, the group’s Syria programme director Danila Zizi said, adding that “more than 15 million people (are) at risk” out of a resident population of some 23 million.As hundreds of thousands of Syrians return to their homes after Islamist-led rebels finally toppled Bashar al-Assad in December, “urgent action is needed to mitigate the risk of accident”, the group said.According to UN figures, more than one million people have returned to their homes since Assad fled, 280,000 of them from abroad.Zizi said that the crude barrel bombs used in large numbers by Assad’s air force during the war had a “higher rate of failing” than other munitions.She said that mines planted by Islamic State group jihadists during their slow retreat in the late 2010s meant there were also “lots of booby traps that have never been really marked or mapped”.In January alone, 125 unexploded ordnance accidents were recorded in which at least 85 people were killed and 152 injured, Humanity and Inclusion said.Most of the casualties have been farmers tending their fields or flocks, or children playing outdoors, it said.

Dozens of flag-waving Israelis gathered under a stormy sky Thursday lining the route of a convoy bringing home the bodies of four deceased hostages handed over by Hamas in Gaza.The Palestinian militants had handed over black coffins they said contained the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two young boys, Kfir and Ariel — who became symbols of the ordeal that has gripped Israel since the Gaza war began.The Red Cross-mediated handover, which Hamas said also included the body of elderly captive Oded Lifshitz, took place at a former cemetery in the south Gaza city of Khan Yunis.It is the first handover of bodies by Hamas since its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, and is taking place under a fragile ceasefire that has seen living hostages exchanged for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.Some 100 Israelis had also gathered at the Tel Aviv plaza dubbed Hostages Square — site of regular protests for the release of the hostages.”This is one of the hardest days, I think, since October 7,” said museum manager Tania Coen Uzzielli, 59, who had gathered in the square with around 100 others.”I think the feeling of personal guilt is something each of us carries — that maybe we could have done more, that maybe we didn’t do enough to prevent this tragedy.”Large screens in the square showed images of the Bibas family and Lifshitz, while orange balloons symbolised the red hair of the two Bibas children, who were aged four and nine months at the time of their capture.The family became national symbols of the despair that has gripped the nation since the Hamas attack and hostage takings.Footage of their abduction, filmed and broadcast by Hamas during its attack, showed them being seized from their home near the Gaza border.Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri’s husband, was abducted separately and released in a hostage-prisoner exchange on February 1.While their deaths have largely been accepted as fact abroad since Hamas said an Israeli air strike killed them early in the war, Israel had never confirmed.”There are no other words, I am heart broken,” said Sharon Gazit, 60, a Tel Aviv resident who had also gathered in Hostages Square.- ‘Ask for forgiveness’ -Israel confirmed the convoy carrying the coffins had reached its territory but refrained from identifying the dead hostages.The bodies were to be taken from Kissufim in southern Israel to an institute of forensic medicine in Tel Aviv for identification.President Isaac Herzog said “the hearts of an entire nation lie in tatters”.”On behalf of the State of Israel, I bow my head and ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day. Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely”, he said in a statement.Hundreds of Gazans had gathered in Khan Yunis to witness the handover. Large numbers of armed men in military fatigues and Hamas headbands stood near the stage for the ceremony, which was carefully choreographed like previous handovers of live hostages.Each coffin bore a small photograph of the deceased.Under the first phase of the ceasefire which took effect on January 19, militants have so far freed 19 living Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners.Another six living hostages are to be released on Saturday while four more bodies are to be handed over next week.Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during their attack. Prior to Thursday’s handover, there were 70 hostages in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.