Category: 2. Middle East

Qatar’s chief negotiator voiced frustration over talks for a truce in Gaza in an interview with AFP, a month after Israel resumed its strikes on the Palestinian territory and another round of negotiations ended without a deal.

“We’re definitely frustrated by the slowness, sometimes, of the process in the negotiation. This is an urgent matter. There are lives at stake here if this military operation continues day by day,” Mohammed Al-Khulaifi said on Friday.

Qatar, with the United States and…

The fate of a US-Israeli hostage who Hamas said had featured in an Israeli truce proposal remains unknown, the group said on Saturday, separately releasing a video of another captive alive.

The body of a guard assigned to the American-Israeli, Edan Alexander, had been recovered from the site of a recent Israeli strike, Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement.

“But the fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” the militants said.

Hamas on…

The number of Israelis who signed petitions demanding the return of captives from Gaza even at the cost of halting the war climbed to nearly 140,000 as of Saturday, according to the campaign, which is gaining momentum across Israeli society.

The movement, coordinated through the website Restored Israel, reflects growing frustration over the government’s military strategy and its failure to secure the release of captives.

In the past 24 hours alone, over 10,000…

Israeli authorities on Saturday blocked Christian worshippers’ access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in occupied Jerusalem when they tried to mark Holy Saturday (Holy Fire), a sacred day in Easter weekend celebrations.

Israeli police erected military checkpoints on roads leading to the church in the Old City, checking IDs and denying entry to many young people, according to Palestinian state news agency WAFA.

The restrictions came as Christian communities…

Colombian President Gustavo Petro late Friday condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza and likened the plight of Palestinians to the suffering of Jesus Christ.

“At the moment of the Passion and death of Jesus, let us reflect on the Palestinian people, from where he came, now under a bloody genocide,” Petro wrote on X responding to a post about Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, a prominent Palestinian physician reportedly in critical condition while in Israeli detention…

A Tunisian court sentenced individuals convicted in the “conspiracy against state security” case to prison terms ranging from 13 to 66 years, according to official reports on Saturday.

The Tunisian News Agency reported that the sentences were issued following a trial involving 40 individuals, including prominent political figures.

The court decisions, delivered in the early hours of Saturday, are open to appeal under Tunisian law, it added.

Among those…

With food scarce in the besieged and war-battered Gaza Strip, some desperate families have turned to eating sea turtles as a rare source of protein.

Once the shell has been removed, the meat is cut up, boiled and cooked in a mix of onion, pepper, tomato and spices.

“The children were afraid of the turtle, and we told them it tasted as delicious as veal,” said Majida Qanan, keeping an eye on the chunks of red meat simmering in a pot over a wood fire.

“Some of them ate it, but others refused.”

For…

Armed illegal Israeli settlers stormed the Bedouin village of Ras Ein al-Auja, north of Jericho in the occupied eastern West Bank on Saturday, attacking Palestinian-owned property, according to eyewitnesses and human rights groups.

Hassan Mleihat, coordinator of the al-Baydar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights, said armed illegal settlers in groups entered the village with herds of sheep, grazing them near Palestinian homes, damaging property, and…

Sitting in a crowd of mothers and children under the harsh sun, Najlaa Ahmed described the moment the Rapid Support Forces men poured into Darfur’s Zamzam displacement camp, looting and burning homes as shells rained down and drones flew overhead.

She lost track of most of her family as she fled. “I don’t know what’s become of them, my mother, father, siblings, my grandmother, I came here with strangers,” she said — one of six survivors who told…