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Hamas paraded five Israeli hostages, some looking dazed and others elated, before cheering crowds at two meticulously recorded ceremonies in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.In the first well-rehearsed morning ceremony in Rafah, Hamas fighters stood in an orderly fashion as they handed over hostages Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu, who walked with apparent difficulty, to the Red Cross. As in previous hostage releases, the men were given certificates in Hebrew to mark the end of their captivity before being helped into vehicles from the Red Cross, which acts as an intermediary, an AFP journalist reported.Hamas fighters from the group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, wearing fatigues, balaclavas and green headbands, formed a cordon around the area to hold back the crowd of onlookers.In a similarly choreographed ceremony later in Nuseirat, hostages Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov and Omer Wenkert took the stage with shaved heads, smiling at a cheering crowd of hundreds.The trio stood briefly on stage alongside Hamas fighters, waving at the crowd while a camera drone and a photographer captured the moment.- Display of strength -Shem Tov, who was abducted on October 7 from the Nova music festival in southern Israel, waved and blew kisses to the crowd before kissing two of his Hamas captors on their keffiyeh-wrapped heads.Israel’s military said later it had received a sixth Israeli hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, who was captured in Gaza a decade ago.At both ceremonies, the Palestinian militants put on a display of strength. In Rafah, some held Kalashnikov assault rifles and others flaunted hand-held rocket launchers, while Hamas’s green flag flew around the square on buildings destroyed by war in the Palestinian territory.Fidaa Awda, a resident of the southern city who attended the ceremony told AFP: “We say and continue to say that we are with the resistance, we are with the valiant Brigades, we are with the fighters.”On stage in southern Gaza, in front of a table draped in camouflage cloth, US-made assault rifles reportedly seized from Israeli soldiers in combat were displayed.Behind the table, a slogan in Arabic, English and Hebrew read: “We are the flood. We are the extreme strength” – War slogans -The slogan referenced Operation Al-Aqsa flood, the name used by Hamas and its allied Palestinian factions for their October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.Other banners depicted fallen Hamas military commanders, including former armed wing chief Mohammed Deif, killed in an Israeli air strike in 2024.A poster below the stage read “and the red freedom has a door, struck by every bloodied hand”.The sentence is a verse from a 1926 anti-colonial poem by Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi which slain Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was seen reciting in a video taken during the Gaza war. Some in the crowd of hundreds stood on large chunks of concrete from nearby buildings demolished by bombs, others on the upper floors of buildings whose walls appeared damaged by the war.One man held a young boy clad in military fatigues and a Hamas headband as militants in arms paraded on the back of pickup trucks.In a statement, Hamas praised the hostage releases and said that the Israeli public had two options.”Either they receive their prisoners in coffins, as happened on Thursday, due to Netanyahu’s arrogance, or they embrace their prisoners alive in commitment to the (Palestinian) resistance’s conditions.”Sixty-two hostages taken during Hamas’s October 7 attack are still being held in Gaza, including 35 who the Israeli military says are dead.

One of China’s leading electric vehicle makers XPeng plans to double the number of countries in which the company operates by the end of this year, its CEO said Saturday.Founded in 2014, XPeng is one of the Chinese firms in the sector with the strongest international ambitions, focusing in particular on cutting-edge technologies and design.”We …

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A crowd cheered as masked militants brought two pale and dazed Israeli captives onto a rainy stage in front of cameras for the seventh hostage-prisoner exchange of the Gaza ceasefire Saturday.Around the stage, Hamas fighters stood in an orderly fashion in the southern Gazan city of Rafah as the pair were handed over to the Red Cross, with Avera Mengistu, one of the two freed men, walking with apparent difficulty.Like the hostages at previous liberations, Tal Shoham and Mengistu were handed liberation certificates in Hebrew before being helped into vehicles from the Red Cross, which acts as an intermediary, an AFP journalist reported.A Hamas source told AFP that the Palestinian Islamist movement planned to release the other four living hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza later in the morning.In Rafah and Nuseirat, the militant group had prepared for a now well-rehearsed ceremony, building stages to parade the hostages to be released in front of large posters and billboards advertising its cause or praising fallen fighters.In Rafah, Hamas fighters from the group’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam Bridages, wearing fatigues, balaclavas and green headbands stood in a cordon around the handover area to keep the crowd out.In a display of strength, some held Kalashnikov assault rifles and others flaunted hand-held rocket launchers, while Hamas’ green flag flew around the square on buildings destroyed by war in the Palestinian territory.Fidaa Awda, a resident of Rafah who attended the ceremony told AFP: “We say and continue to say that we are with the resistance, we are with the valiant Brigades, we are with the fighters.”- War slogans -In front of a table covered by camouflage cloth on stage, US-made assault rifles of the kind the Israeli military uses were displayed, allegedly taken from Israeli soldiers in combat.Behind the table, a conspicuously placed slogan read “We are the flood. We are the extreme strength” in Arabic, English and Hebrew. The slogan referenced Operation Al-Aqsa flood, the name used by Hamas and its allied Palestinian factions for their October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.Other banners showed fallen Hamas military commanders including former armed wing chief Muhammad Deif, killed by an Israeli air strike in 2024.A poster below the stage read “and the red freedom has a door, struck by every bloodied hand”.The sentence is a verse from a 1926 anti-colonial poem by Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi which slain Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was seen reciting in a video taken during the Gaza war. All around the square, hundreds of Gazans had gathered to watch the ceremony on this foggy, rainy winter morning.Some stood on large chunks of concrete from nearby buildings demolished by bombs, others on the upper floors of buildings whose front walls had been torn off by explosions.One man held a young boy clad in military fatigues and a Hamas headband as militants in arms paraded on the back of pickup trucks.In a statement, Hamas praised the hostage releases and said that the Israeli public had two options.”Either they receive their prisoners in coffins, as happened on Thursday, due to Netanyahu’s arrogance, or they embrace their prisoners alive in commitment to the (Palestinian) resistance’s conditions.”Sixty-five hostages taken during Hamas’s October 7 attack are still being held in Gaza, including 35 who the Israeli military says are dead.

Palestinian militants on Saturday freed two Israeli hostages, among the last live captives eligible for release under the first phase of a fragile truce that is also expected to see Palestinian prisoners released.Freedom for the captives caps an emotional two days in Israel, where the family of another hostage, Shiri Bibas, earlier on Saturday confirmed receipt of her remains. Bibas and her two young sons had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by Israeli hostages since the Gaza war began. Palestinian militants seized dozens of captives during their unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered more than 15 months of war in the Gaza Strip.Militants escorted Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu onto a stage in Rafah, southern Gaza. Shoham was made to address the gathering, flanked by armed and masked fighters dressed all in black, before both men were handed over to the Red Cross which then drove them away in a convoy.Israeli security forces took custody of the men and returned them home to Israeli territory, the military said.In the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, hundreds gathered at a site known as ‘Hostages Square’ reacted with applause, some appearing to weep, as they watched a broadcast of the release.Four other hostages are to be freed on Saturday morning in a separate ceremony in central Gaza.Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum had published the names of the six Israelis to be freed. The list included Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert and Hisham al-Sayed as well as Mengistu and Shoham.Sayed and Mengistu had been held in Gaza for around a decade.The hostages were freed under the first phase of a ceasefire deal which began on January 19 and is due to expire in early March. A Hamas source told AFP that the Islamist group planned to also release four hostages from central Gaza’s Nuseirat later in the morning.- Well-rehearsed ceremony -At both locations the militants prepared for a now well-rehearsed ceremony, building stages in front of large posters advertising the militants’ cause or praising fallen fighters.The Red Cross has repeatedly appealed for handovers to take place in a dignified manner.Under a cold winter rain in Rafah, Hamas staged a show of force after months of bombardment and strikes that killed the group’s top leaders. Some fighters held automatic weapons, others rocket launchers, as nationalistic Palestinian music blared.Hamas’s green flag flew around the square on buildings destroyed by the war.The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel would free 602 inmates on Saturday as part of the exchange.A spokeswoman for the NGO told AFP that most were Gazans arrested after the war began. She added that some of the prisoners would be deported outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories after their release. Those expected to be expelled were serving heavy sentences.The ceasefire has so far seen 21 living Israeli hostages freed from Gaza in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.Saturday’s release of living hostages followed the first transfer on Thursday of hostages’ bodies.Hamas had said Shiri Bibas’s remains were among the four bodies returned on Thursday, but Israeli analysis concluded they were not in fact hers, sparking an outpouring of grief and anger.Hamas then admitted “the possibility of an error or mix-up of bodies”, which it attributed to Israeli bombing of the area.Late Friday the Red Cross confirmed the transfer of more human remains to Israel “at the request of both parties” but did not say whose they were.”After the identification process at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, this morning we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest,” the Bibas family said in a statement.On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — under domestic pressure over his handling of the war and the hostages — vowed to “ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement”.- ‘No forgiveness’ -On Friday, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, after an analysis of the remains, that Palestinian militants had killed the Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, “with their bare hands” in November 2023.Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.Shiri’s sister-in-law, Ofri Bibas, said Friday that the family was “not seeking revenge right now”, while levelling a measure of the blame at Netanyahu, telling him there would be “no forgiveness” for abandoning the mother and her young sons.A fourth body, that of Oded Lifshitz, 83, was also returned Thursday.Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during the October 7 attack that sparked the war. There are 65 hostages still in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,215 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 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.

The Cook Islands said Saturday it has struck a five-year agreement with China to cooperate in exploring and researching the Pacific nation’s seabed mineral riches.A copy of the deal — signed during a state visit to China that has been criticised by former colonial ruler New Zealand — showed it covers working together in the …

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The family of Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas confirmed on Saturday receipt of her remains, just ahead of the seventh hostage-prisoner exchange under a fragile Gaza ceasefire. Bibas and her two young sons had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by Israeli hostages since the Gaza war began. Palestinian militants seized dozens of captives during their unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered more than 15 months of war in the Gaza Strip.Hamas had said the mother’s remains were among four bodies returned on Thursday, but Israeli analysis concluded they were not in fact hers, sparking an outpouring of grief and anger.Hamas then admitted “the possibility of an error or mix-up of bodies”, which it attributed to Israeli bombing of the area.Late Friday the International Committee of the Red Cross had confirmed the transfer of more human remains to Israel “at the request of both parties” but did not say whose they were.”After the identification process at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, this morning we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest,” the Bibas family said in a statement.Earlier Saturday Bibas’s kibbutz community, Nir Oz, had announced “the murder of Shiri Bibas.”On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — under domestic pressure over his handling of the war and the hostages — vowed to “ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement”.He accused the Palestinian militant group of murdering young Ariel and Kfir Bibas.Hamas affirmed its “full commitment” to the ongoing ceasefire deal, which has so far seen 19 living Israeli hostages freed from Gaza in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.The group’s armed wing confirmed it would release six living Israelis Saturday in the latest swap since the ceasefire began.- Two locations -Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum has published the names of the six Israelis to be freed — Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu.Sayed and Mengistu have been held in Gaza for around a decade.The six are the last living hostages eligible for release under the truce deal’s first phase, which is due to expire in early March. Hamas has also promised to hand over four more bodies next week.A Hamas source told AFP that the Islamist group planned to release two hostages from Rafah, southern Gaza, and then four from Nuseirat in central Gaza later in the morning.At both locations the militants prepared for a now well-rehearsed ceremony, building stages to parade the hostages to be released in front of large posters advertising its cause or praising fallen fighters.The Red Cross has repeatedly appealed for handovers to take place in a dignified manner.Under a cold winter rain in Rafah, Hamas fighters wearing military fatigues, balaclavas and Hamas headbands stood in a square around the space where the handover was to occur. In a show of force after months of bombardment and strikes that killed the group’s top leaders, some fighters held automatic weapons, others rocket launchers.Hamas’s green flag flew around the square on buildings destroyed by war in the Palestinian territory.The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel would free 602 inmates on Saturday as part of the exchange.A spokeswoman for the NGO told AFP that most were Gazans arrested after the war began. She added that 108 of the prisoners would be deported outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories after their release.- ‘No forgiveness’ -On Friday, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, after an analysis of the remains, that Palestinian militants had killed the Bibas boys “with their bare hands” in November 2023.Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.Shiri’s sister-in-law, Ofri Bibas, said Friday that the family was “not seeking revenge right now”, while levelling a measure of the blame at Netanyahu, telling him there would be “no forgiveness” for abandoning the mother and her young sons.A fourth body, that of Oded Lifshitz, a veteran journalist and long-time defender of Palestinian rights, was also returned Thursday during the first transfer of bodies under the truce.Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during the October 7 attack that sparked the war. There are 66 hostages still in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,215 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 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.

Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas’s community confirmed her death Saturday after new remains were returned from Gaza, as the seventh hostage-prisoner exchange under a fragile Gaza ceasefire was set to go ahead. Bibas and her two young sons, whose bodies were returned by Hamas to Israel on Thursday, had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by Israeli hostages since the Gaza war began. Hamas had said the mother’s remains were among those returned Thursday, but Israeli analysis concluded they were not in fact hers, sparking an outpouring of grief and anger.”Kibbutz Nir Oz announces with deep pain and sorrow the murder of Shiri Bibas, of blessed memory, who was abducted from her home on October 7 and killed in captivity in Gaza,” her community said in a statement, adding “she will be laid to rest in the land of Israel alongside her two young sons”.The International Committee of the Red Cross had earlier confirmed the transfer of more human remains to Israel “at the request of both parties” but did not say whose they were.On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement” and accused the Palestinian militant group of murdering young Ariel and Kfir Bibas.The group admitted “the possibility of an error or mix-up of bodies”, which it attributed to Israeli bombing of the area.Hamas also affirmed its “full commitment” to the ongoing ceasefire deal, which has so far seen 19 living Israeli hostages freed from Gaza in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.The group’s armed wing confirmed it would release six living Israelis Saturday in the seventh swap since the ceasefire began.They are the last living hostages eligible for release under the truce deal’s first phase, which is due to expire in early March. Hamas has also promised to hand over four more bodies next week.The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Friday that Israel would free 602 inmates on Saturday as part of the exchange.A spokeswoman for the NGO told AFP that 445 were Gazans arrested after the war began, while 60 were serving long sentences, 50 were serving life sentences and 47 were re-arrested after being freed in a 2011 prisoner exchange.She added that 108 of the prisoners would be deported outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories after their release.- ‘No forgiveness’ -Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said after an analysis of the remains that Palestinian militants had killed the Bibas boys “with their bare hands”.Hamas, however, has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.Shiri’s sister-in-law, Ofri Bibas, said Friday that the family was “not seeking revenge right now”, while levelling a measure of the blame at Netanyahu, telling him there would be “no forgiveness” for abandoning the mother and her young sons.A fourth body, that of Oded Lifshitz, a veteran journalist and long-time defender of Palestinian rights, was also returned Thursday.Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during the October 7 attack that sparked the war. There are 67 hostages still in Gaza, including more than 30 the Israeli military has said are dead.The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,214 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally until Friday of Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 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.

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