International
Hamas releases 13 Israeli, four Thai captives after hours-long delay
Hamas releases 13 Israeli, four Thai captives after hours-long delay
Hamas has handed over 13 Israeli captives and four Thai nationals to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after a delay of seven hours as the group claimed that Israel had violated the terms of a truce.
The impasse was resolved following mediation by Qatar and Egypt on Saturday, the second day of the pause in hostilities in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Israel is now expected to release 39 Palestinian prisoners from its jails.
Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson for Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a post on X that 13 Israelis and four foreign nationals had been handed over to the ICRC. They were on their way to the Rafah border crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt before travelling to Israel.
The 17 captives had arrived in Israel, the Israeli Army posted on X.
“After undergoing an initial medical assessment, they will continue to be accompanied by IDF [Israeli Army] soldiers as they make their way to Israeli hospitals, where they will be reunited with their families,” it said.
Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said that the 17 released were “taken to an airbase in southern Israel for an initial check where they will then be flown to several different hospitals throughout the Tel Aviv area for additional medical and psychological checks”.
The Israeli captives included six adult women and seven children and teenagers, according to a statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office. The hostages were released after spending 50 days in captivity, it said.
Delay in handover
Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan had said earlier that the aid deliveries permitted by Israel had fallen short of what had been promised and were not reaching northern Gaza, which was the target of Israel’s offensive.
Only 65 of 340 aid trucks that had entered Gaza since Friday had reached northern Gaza, which was “less than half of what Israel agreed on”, Hamdan said from Beirut.
Israel has said 50 trucks with food, water, shelter equipment and medical supplies had deployed to northern Gaza under United Nations supervision, the first significant aid delivery there since the start of the war seven weeks ago.
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, earlier said Israel had failed to respect the terms of the Palestinian prisoner release.
Qadura Fares, the Palestinian commissioner for prisoners, said Israel had not released detainees by seniority, as was expected.
The row over the second swap of captives for prisoners quashed hopes after 13 Israeli women and children were freed by Hamas on Friday. Ten Thai nationals and one citizen from the Philippines were freed as part of a separate agreement, and 39 Palestinian women and teenagers were released from Israeli jails.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the government was committed to complying with the truce agreement with Hamas but that there were many parties and factors involved. “And every day brings with it its complexities,” he added.
Yet, at least two Palestinians were reported to have been killed by the Israeli military and 11 wounded as they attempted the trip to northern Gaza on Friday.
A large number of displaced people were trying to return home across Gaza as the four-day truce brokered by Qatar took effect on Friday. However, Israel has warned people that they will not be allowed to enter the north of the war-torn enclave.
‘Joy is resistance too’
Many Palestinian families were, meanwhile, waiting for the release of their loved ones from Israeli prisons.
Safaa Merie, who was among hundreds of people who gathered to receive the prisoners in Beitunia, told Al Jazeera she was waiting for a 14-year-old boy on behalf of his family members from Jenin, a city in the north of the occupied West Bank.
“Because of the military checkpoints by the Israelis, it’s very difficult to come here, almost impossible,” she told Al Jazeera.
“I don’t know him but we are all here to welcome all the prisoners.”
Manal Tamimi told Al Jazeera in el-Bireh, also in the occupied West Bank, that she was waiting for her teenage nephew Wisam to be released after seven months.
“Our brothers and sisters in Gaza – our hearts are bleeding for them,” she said.
“But we believe that joy is resistance too and [we should not] let the occupier break us, break our happiness.”
Truce extension?
Before the snag in the latest hostages-to-prisoners exchange, Egypt, which controls the Rafah border crossing through which aid supplies have resumed into southern Gaza, said it had received “positive signals” from all parties over a possible extension to the pause in fighting.
Diaa Rashwan, the head of Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS), said in a statement that Cairo was holding extensive talks with all parties to reach an agreement that would mean “the release of more detainees in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails”.
Israel has said the truce could be extended if Hamas continues to release hostages at a rate of at least 10 per day. A Palestinian source has said up to 100 hostages could go free.
For now, 50 of about 240 hostages are to be exchanged for 150 Palestinian prisoners over four days under the truce, the first halt in fighting since Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people.
Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas, raining bombs and shells on the enclave and launching a ground offensive in the north. Israel’s relentless bombardment has killed more than 14,800 people, roughly 40 percent of them children, Palestinian health authorities said on Saturday.
Hamas releases 13 Israeli, four Thai captives after hours-long delay
AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
International
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
The last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza was forcibly evacuated by the Israeli military on Friday after dozens of people were reportedly killed in Israeli strikes targeting the area.
Medical staff, including the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, have also been detained, Gaza health officials said on Saturday.
The hospital director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was among the first to report that about 50 people had been killed in Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital on Friday.
The IDF had said it was carrying out an operation in the area, alleging the hospital was a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”.
On Friday, patients at the hospital were forcibly moved to the nearby Indonesian Hospital which doctors warn is damaged and unsuitable due to a lack of power generators and water.
Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan, told the BBC the military had ordered the evacuation around 07:00 on Friday, giving the hospital about 15 minutes to move patients and staff into the courtyard.
Israeli troops then entered the hospital and removed the remaining patients, he said.
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The IDF said it had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” before beginning the operation.
Seriously ill patients were moved to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, itself evacuated earlier in the week, which medics have described as non-functional.
“You can’t call it a hospital, it’s more of a shelter. It’s not equipped for patients,” Gaza’s deputy minister of health, Dr Abu-Al Rish, told the BBC on Friday.
Dr Sabbah, from Kamal Adwan Hospital, said: “It’s dangerous because there are patients in the ICU department in a coma and in need of ventilation machines and moving them will put them in danger.”
He had said critically ill patients needed to be moved in specialised vehicles.
The World Health Organization said the raid “has put this last major health facility in north Gaza out of service”.
“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” it posted on X on Friday.
Nadav Shoshani, international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said in a post on Friday evening on X that a “small fire broke out in an empty building inside the hospital that is under control”.
This was when IDF troops were not inside the hospital, he said, adding that “after preliminary examination, no connection was found between IDF activity to the fire”.
The director of Kamal Adwan hospital had said on Friday that approximately 50 people had been killed, including five medical staff, in a series of Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital.
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The statement from Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said a building opposite the hospital was targeted by Israeli warplanes, leading to the death of a paediatrician and a lab technician, as well as their families.
He said a third staff member who worked as a maintenance technician was targeted and killed as he rushed to the scene of the first strike.
Two of the hospital’s paramedics were 500m (1,640ft) away from the hospital when they were targeted and killed by another strike, the statement continued, with their bodies remaining in the street with no-one able to reach them.
The Israeli military said on Friday morning that it was “unaware of strikes in the area of Kamal Adwan hospital” and was looking into the reports that staff had been killed.
Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia has been under a tightening Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the military said it had launched an offensive to stop Hamas from regrouping there.
The UN has said the area is under a “near-total siege” as the Israeli military heavily restricts access of aid deliveries to an area where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain.
In recent days, the hospital’s administrators have issued desperate pleas appealing to be protected, as they say the facility has become a regular target for Israeli shelling and explosives.
Oxfam said that attempts by aid agencies to deliver supplies to the area since October had been unsuccessful because of “deliberate delays and systematic obstructions” by the Israeli military.
Additional reporting by Shaimaa Khalil
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
BBC
International
Trump asks Supreme Court to suspend law for TikTok ban
Trump asks Supreme Court to suspend law for TikTok ban
US President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief Friday urging the Supreme Court to pause a law that would ban TikTok the day before his January 20 inauguration if it is not sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance.
“In light of the novelty and difficulty of this case, the court should consider staying the statutory deadline to grant more breathing space to address these issues,” Trump’s legal team wrote, to give him “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution.”
Trump was fiercely opposed to TikTok during his 2017-21 first term, and tried in vain to ban the video app on national security grounds.
The Republican voiced concerns — echoed by political rivals — that the Chinese government might tap into US TikTok users’ data or manipulate what they see on the platform.
US officials had also voiced alarm over the popularity of the video-sharing app with young people, alleging that its parent company is subservient to Beijing and that the app is used to spread propaganda, claims denied by the company and the Chinese government.
Trump called for a US company to buy TikTok, with the government sharing in the sale price, and his successor Joe Biden went one stage further — signing a law to ban the app for the same reasons.
– Reversing course –
Trump has now, however, reversed course.
At a press conference last week, Trump said he has “a warm spot” for TikTok and that his administration would take a look at the app and the potential ban.
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Earlier this month, the president-elect met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Recently, Trump told Bloomberg he had changed his mind about the app: “Now (that) I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition.”
“If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram — and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.”
International
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
Actress Olivia Hussey, who shot to international prominence as a teenager for her role in the acclaimed 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet, has died aged 73.
The Argentinian-born actress, who grew up in London, died on Friday surrounded by her loved ones, a statement posted on her Instagram said.
Hussey won the best new actress Golden Globe for her part as Juliet, but decades later she sued Paramount Pictures for sexual abuse as she was aged just 15 when she filmed the movie’s nude scene.
Her other most notable screen role was as Mary, mother of Jesus, in 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth.
“As we grieve this immense loss, we also celebrate Olivia’s enduring impact on our lives and the industry,” the statement said.
Hussey was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1951, before moving to London aged seven and studying at the Italia Conti Academy drama school.
1968’s Romeo and Juliet was nominated for best picture and director Oscars
She was 15 when Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli discovered her onstage, playing opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the play The Prime of Miss Joan Brodie
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Zeffirelli was looking for someone who was young enough to be a convincing Juliet in what he intended to be the definitive cinematic version of the Shakespeare play.
He cast Hussey alongisde British 16-year-old Leonard Whiting as Romeo in the film.
The film was nominated for an Oscar for best picture and director. Hussey missed out on an Oscar nomination herself in a strong year in which Barbra Streisand won the main award for Funny Girl.
But at that year’s Golden Globes Hussey won the award for best new star.
Decades later, she and Whiting sued Paramount Pictures alleging Zeffirelli – who died in 2019 – had encouraged them to film nude scenes despite previous assurances they would not have to.
The pair sought damages of more than $500m (£417m), based on suffering they said they had experienced and the revenue brought in by the film since its release.
But last year a judge dismissed the case, finding the scene was not “sufficiently sexually suggestive”.
In 1977, Hussey had reunited with Zeffirelli for Jesus of Nazareth to play the Virgin Mary, before appearing in Death on the Nile a year later based on Agatha Christie’s novel.
Her roles in early slasher film Black Christmas (1974) and TV film Psycho IV: The Beginning earned her recognition as a scream queen. In the latter, she p[layed Norman Bates’s mother in a prequel storyline.
In later years she also took on work as a voice actress, appearing frequently in video games.
But she did have one final reunion with her former Romeo – as she and Whiting appeared together in the 2015 British film Social Suicide, which was loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, albeit set in the social media era.
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
BBC
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