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Netanyahu to begin talks on 2nd phase of Gaza truce

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will begin talks on a second phase to the Gaza ceasefire in Washington on Monday, his office said hours after the completion of the fourth hostage-prisoner exchange of the truce.Netanyahu spoke with the US President’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff on Saturday and agreed that negotiations would “begin when they meet in Washington”.A date for formal talks involving mediators and delegations from Hamas and Israel has not been set, with the 42-day first phase due to end next month.Netanyahu’s office said Witkoff would talk to Qatar and Egypt, key mediators, before discussing with the Israeli premier “steps to advance the negotiations, including dates for delegations to leave for talks”.The second phase is expected to cover the release of the remaining captives and to include discussions on a more permanent end to the war, something several members of Netanyahu’s government oppose.- Hostages, prisoners released -As part of the first phase, Hamas on Saturday freed three Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 180 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli custody.Hostages Ofer Kalderon and Yarden Bibas were paraded on stage by Hamas fighters before being handed over to the Red Cross in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis. US-Israeli Keith Siegel was freed in a similar ceremony at Gaza City’s port in the north.The Israeli military later confirmed that all three were back in Israel.Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum hailed their release as “a ray of light in the darkness”.”I hope that this is a sign of the rebirth of the people of Israel, not just of Ofer, not just of the hostages,” Kalderon’s uncle Shemi told AFP, overcome with emotion.Later in the day, a bus carrying released Palestinian prisoners was greeted by a cheering crowd in the West Bank city of Ramallah, while three other buses were met by hundreds of well-wishers in Khan Yunis.”I need a great deal of composure to control myself, to steady my nerves, to absorb this overwhelming moment,” said one released prisoner, Ata Abdelghani, as he prepared to meet his now 10-year-old twin sons for the first time.- ‘Mixed emotions’ -After holding the hostages for more than 15 months, militants in Gaza began releasing them on January 19 under the terms of the ceasefire deal with Israel.Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad have so far handed over 18 hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Israelis among them in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and children.A total of 183 prisoners were freed Saturday, all of them Palestinian except for one Egyptian.Hamas sources said a fifth hostage-prisoner exchange would take place next Saturday.The ceasefire’s six-week first phase hinges on the release of a total of 33 hostages in exchange for around 1,900 people, mostly Palestinians, held in Israeli jails.During their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which started the Gaza war, militants abducted Siegel from kibbutz Kfar Aza, and Bibas and Kalderon from kibbutz Nir Oz.Militants took a total of 251 people hostage that day. Of those, 76 remain in Gaza, including at least 34 the military says are dead.Those seized include Bibas’s wife Shiri and their two children, whom Hamas has declared dead, although Israeli officials have not confirmed that.Bibas’s sons — Kfir, the youngest hostage, whose second birthday was in January, and his older brother Ariel, whose fifth birthday was in August — have become symbols of the hostages’ ordeal.Footage released by the Israeli military showed Bibas being reunited with his sister and father, who held him in a lengthy embrace.In a statement issued via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the Bibas family said “a quarter of our heart has returned to us after 15 long months.”But the home remains incomplete,” the family said.Israel’s hostage coordinator, Gal Hirsch, said the government continued “to demand information” from the ceasefire’s brokers about the rest of the Bibas family.- Sighs of relief -Hundreds had gathered in the Tel Aviv plaza dubbed “Hostage Square” to watch live television coverage of the latest releases.Sighs of relief ran through the crowd as the three were freed, though the mood was mostly sombre.At Tel Aviv’s Sheba Hospital, Kalderon, a keen mountain biker, beamed and blew kisses as he was met by a contingent of cyclist friends chanting his name.”It’s amazing, amazing. A year-and-a-half is culminating in this moment,” said Navit Hermesh. “We missed him so much, we worried about him so much, and we are so happy that he’s coming back.”At Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Centre, deputy director Gil Fire said Siegel’s health was good enough after his ordeal for him to have “spent his first few hours here in the greatest privacy with his family”.Ahead of the releases in Khan Yunis and Gaza City, scores of masked Hamas fighters stood guard in an apparent effort to prevent large crowds forming.It was a sharp contrast to the chaotic scenes that accompanied Thursday’s handover, which prompted Israel to briefly delay its release of Palestinian prisoners in protest.- ‘Difficult’ situation -After Saturday’s hostage release, Gaza’s key Rafah border crossing with Egypt was reopened, with the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory saying 50 Palestinian patients in need of specialist treatment had passed through.Egyptian state-linked channel Al-Qahera News showed footage of the first evacuees, who included 30 children with cancer.Gaza hospitals director Muhammad Zaqout said he hoped the numbers would increase.”We now have 6,000 cases ready to be transferred, and more than 12,000 cases that are in dire need of treatment,” he said.Rafah was a vital entry point for aid before the Israeli military seized the Palestinian side of the crossing in May.US President Donald Trump, who has claimed credit for the ceasefire deal, is expected to host Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday.

At least 56 killed as fighting grips Sudan’s capital

Artillery shelling and air strikes killed at least 56 people across greater Khartoum on Saturday, according to a medical source and activists, the latest bloodshed in Sudan’s devastating war.Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a battle for power since April 2023 that has intensified this month with the army fighting to take back control of the capital.RSF shelling killed 54 and injured 158 people at a busy market in army-controlled Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum, overwhelming the city’s Al-Nao Hospital, according to a medical source and the health ministry.”The shells hit in the middle of the vegetable market, that’s why the victims and the wounded are so many,” one survivor told AFP.The RSF denied carrying out the attack, which French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said caused “utter carnage” at the hospital.Across the Nile in Khartoum proper, two civilians were killed and dozens wounded in an air strike on an RSF-controlled area, said the local Emergency Response Room, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating emergency care across Sudan.Although the RSF has used drones in attacks, including on Saturday, the fighter jets of the regular armed forces maintain a monopoly on air strikes.Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.In addition to killing tens of thousands of people, the war has uprooted more than 12 million and decimated Sudan’s fragile infrastructure, forcing most health facilities out of service.- Metres from hospital -MSF’s general secretary Chris Lockyear was at the Al-Nao Hospital Saturday, where he said “the morgue is full of dead bodies”.”I can see the lives of men, women and children torn apart, with injured people lying in every possible space in the emergency room as medics do what they can,” he said in a statement.A volunteer at the hospital told AFP it faced dire shortages of “shrouds, blood donors and stretchers to transport the wounded”.Al-Nao, one of the last medical facilities operating in Omdurman, has been repeatedly attacked.According to the Sudanese doctors’ union, one shell fell “just metres away” from the hospital.The union said most of the victims were women and children, and called on nurses and doctors in the area to head to the hospital to relieve a “severe shortage of medical staff”.The fighting in the capital comes weeks after the army launched an offensive across central Sudan, reclaiming Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani before setting its sights on Khartoum.The RSF has since remained in control of the road between Wad Madani and Khartoum, but on Saturday an army-allied militia claimed control of the towns of Tamboul, Rufaa, Al-Hasaheisa and Al-Hilaliya, some 125 kilometres (77 miles) southeast of the capital.The group, the Sudan Shield Forces, is led by Abu Aqla Kaykal, who defected from the RSF last year and has been accused of atrocities against civilians both during his tenure with the RSF and now on the army’s side.Sudan remains effectively split, with the RSF in control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur and swathes of the south, and the army controlling the country’s east and north.- Counter-offensive -After months of stalemate in greater Khartoum, the army has broken RSF sieges on several bases in the capital, including its headquarters, pushing the paramilitary increasingly into the city’s outskirts.Witnesses said Saturday’s bombardment of Omdurman came from the city’s western outskirts, where the RSF remains in control.It came a day after RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo vowed to retake the capital.”We expelled them (from Khartoum) before, and we will expel them again,” he told troops in a rare video address.Greater Khartoum has been a key battleground in nearly 22 months of fighting between the army and the RSF, and has been reduced to a shell of its former self.An investigation by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that 26,000 people were killed in the capital alone between April 2023 and June 2024.Entire neighbourhoods have been taken over by fighters while at least 3.6 million civilians have fled, according to the United Nations.Those unable or unwilling to leave have reported frequent artillery fire on residential areas, and widespread hunger in besieged neighbourhoods blockaded by opposing forces.At least 106,000 people are estimated to be suffering from famine in Khartoum, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, with a further 3.2 million experiencing crisis levels of hunger.Nationwide, famine has been declared in five areas — most of them in Darfur — and is expected to take hold of five more by May.

Netanyahu appoints Major General Eyal Zamir as Israel’s new army chief

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named retired Major General Eyal Zamir as Israel’s new armed forces chief Saturday after his predecessor resigned last month taking responsibility for failing to stop Hamas’s October 2023 attack.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have agreed this evening on the appointment of Major General (Res.) Eyal Zamir as the next chief of staff of the (Israeli military),” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. Zamir replaces Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, who resigned on January 21, two days after a fragile ceasefire took effect in Gaza which has now seen the release of 18 hostages by Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad.Zamir, 59, has been serving as defence ministry director general since 2023 and, according to Israeli media, he retired from the military after losing out on the top job to Halevi.Zamir had served as the deputy chief of staff until 2021 and prior to that was head of the army’s Southern Command, which is responsible for Gaza.As head of Southern Command, Zamir led efforts to “thwart offensive terror tunnels penetrating from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory,” according to the defence ministry.Halevi said in his resignation letter that he was stepping down “due to my acknowledgement of responsibility for the (military’s) failure on October 7, (2023)”, but added that he was leaving at a time of “significant successes”.Shortly after Halevi’s announcement, the wartime head of Southern Command, Major General Yaron Finkelman, too resigned over the military’s failings in 2023.