International Glance
Hamas intends to maintain security control in Gaza during an interim period, a senior Hamas official told Reuters, adding he could not commit to the group disarming - positions that reflect the difficulties facing US plans to secure an end to the war.
Hamas politburo member Mohammed Nazzal also said the group was ready for a ceasefire of up to five years to rebuild devastated Gaza, with guarantees for what happens afterwards depending on Palestinians being given "horizons and hope" for statehood.
Speaking to Reuters in an interview from Doha, where Hamas politicians have long resided, Nazzal defended the group's crackdown in Gaza, where it carried out public executions on Monday. There were always "exceptional measures" during war and those executed were criminals guilty of killing, he said.
Pressure To Disarm
While Hamas has broadly expressed these views before, the timing of Nazzal's comments demonstrates the major obstacles obstructing efforts to cement a full end to the war in Gaza, days after the first phase of the ceasefire was agreed.
Hamas Aims To Keep Grip On Gaza Security, Can't Commit To Disarm, Says Senior Official
IDF investigates report of Israeli troops setting Gaza sewage treatment plant ablaze
The Israel Defense Forces are investigating reports Israeli troops who were occupying a key sewage treatment plant in Gaza set it ablaze amid a drawdown of their forces from much of the enclave's territory last week as a part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
The Sheikh Aljin sewage treatment plant, located to the southeast of Gaza City, was badly damaged in the reported fire, according to Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility.
The CMWU told ABC News that an in-person investigation of the site on Tuesday, Oct. 14, confirmed that four of the plant's six biological treatment towers had suffered massive fire damage.
According to the CMWU, the plastic cells and hydraulic systems inside the treatment towers had been destroyed and their concrete walls cracked by the fire.
Photos taken by the CMWU's staff after the fire and provided to ABC News reveal the damage to the plant. The photos show multiple treatment towers with charred walls, their interiors burnt out and strewn with garbage. The treatment towers are scattered with Hebrew-language graffiti, including one reading, "I'll be back soon."
Russians and Ukrainians expect no major breakthrough at planned Trump-Putin summit
People in Russia and Ukraine on Friday hoped for progress but anticipated no major breakthrough on ending their war at an upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders agreed in a phone call Thursday to meet in Budapest, Hungary, in the coming weeks, according to Trump, who was scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House later Friday.
“When (Trump and Putin) meet, I don’t think anything will be achieved quickly,” 36-year-old Moscow resident Artyom Kondratov told The Associated Press.
At a previous Trump-Putin summit in Alaska in August, Putin didn’t budge from his demands and has raised objections about some key aspects of U.S.-led peace efforts. Three rounds of direct peace talks in Istanbul yielded no major breakthroughs.
Aid group suspends Gaza operations after ceasefire
The controversial US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has confirmed it suspended operations in Gaza after the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October.
Despite being funded until November, the organisation said its final delivery was on Friday.
The GHF has been heavily criticised after hundreds of Palestinians were killed while collecting food near its distribution sites. Witnesses say most were killed by Israeli forces.
Israel has regularly denied that its troops fired on civilians at or near the sites and the GHF has maintained that aid distribution at its sites has been carried out "without incident".
The group's northernmost aid distribution site, known as SDS4, was shut down because it was no longer in IDF-controlled territory, said a spokesman.
'This is not Gaza': Palestinians return to war-torn neighborhoods amid fragile ceasefire
"Of course, I was happy about being released, but not happy of being displaced with no safety in place, no life necessities," said 23-year-old Abdullah Wa'el Mohammed Farhan, one of the former Palestinian prisoners freed on Monday as part of a ceasefire deal that President Donald Trump helped broker.
Standing outside a tent in Khan Younis, where he and his family are living, Farhan told ABC News that he was imprisoned for 20 months as the war with Israel raged on. He said that while detained, he and the other Palestinian prisoners were "completely isolated from the world."
"When I was told about my release, I didn’t believe it because more than once [Israeli authorities] told us about our release and moved us from one prison to another while being tortured and beaten," Farhan said.
Putin-Trump call a curveball for Zelensky ahead of White House meeting
News of the phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, in which they agreed to meet in person to discuss the war in Ukraine, will have come as an unwelcome surprise to Kyiv.
The country is being hit hard.
The last 24 hours alone have seen Russia launch dozens of missiles and more than 300 drones at multiple targets.
Once again, they include a large amount of civilian infrastructure with further damage to the country's gas supply network, just as the first signs of cold herald a long, hard winter ahead.
Attacks on the electrical grid are already leading to nationwide power outages.
For Ukraine's government it's a sign of Russian desperation.
The frontlines are at effective stalemate, involving huge loss of life for incremental territorial gains.
Survivors reported after latest US attack on alleged drug boat in Caribbean
The US military carried out a new strike on Thursday against a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, a US official told Reuters.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not offer additional details about the incident, which has not been previously reported. But it raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in US military custody.
The Pentagon, which has labeled those it has targeted in the strikes as “narcoterrorists”, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Prior to Thursday’s operation, US military strikes against suspected drug boats off Venezuela killed at least 27 people, raising alarms among some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, who question whether they adhere to the laws of war.
More Articles...
- Israel imposes new Gaza aid restrictions, keeps Rafah crossing closed
- Gaza ceasefire tested as Israeli forces kill five Palestinians
- Russia intensifies attacks on Ukraine's trains in 'battle for the railways'
- Trump says he authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela as Maduro decries the move as ‘coups d’etat’
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