Hamas says it does not have 40 hostages who fit criteria for deal with Israel

US-backed proposal involves women, children and elderly or sick hostages in Gaza being exchanged for 900 Palestinian prisoners

The Palestinian militant group Hamas has indicated it does not have 40 captives who are still alive who meet the “humanitarian” criteria for a proposed hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire agreement with Israel.

A senior Israeli official confirmed claims made at the weekend by Hamas during talks in Cairo that it does not have 40 hostages in Gaza who meet the exchange criteria.

Guardian Newsroom: Crisis in the Middle East
On Tuesday 30 April, 7-8.15pm GMT, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont, Emma Graham-Harrison and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

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Russia warns against travel to Middle East amid fears of Iranian attack on Israel – as it happened

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Israeli forces killed three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an airstrike in Gaza without consulting senior commanders or political leaders including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, says Reuters citing Israeli media reports on Thursday.

Quoting senior Israeli officials, Walla news agency said neither Netanyahu nor defence minister Yoav Gallant had been told in advance of the strike, which was coordinated by the Israeli military and the Shin Bet intelligence service.

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IDF colonel discusses ‘data science magic powder’ for locating terrorists

Video of official from Unit 8200 in February 2023 raises questions about Israel’s denials of use of AI in Gaza

A video has surfaced of a senior official at Israel’s cyber intelligence agency, Unit 8200, talking last year about the use of machine learning “magic powder” to help identify Hamas targets in Gaza.

The footage raises questions about the accuracy of a recent statement about use of artificial intelligence (AI) by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which said it “does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist”.

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Lebanese man under US sanctions for allegedly funding Hamas found dead

Body of Mohammad Surur reportedly discovered in town outside Beirut with several gunshot wounds to his legs

A Lebanese man under US sanctions for allegedly funnelling millions of dollars to Hamas has been found dead in a mountain town outside Beirut.

The body of Mohammad Surur was found on Tuesday in a villa in the mountain town of Beit Mery, with several gunshot wounds to his legs, according to security sources.

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Hamas leader repeats Gaza ceasefire call after sons and grandchildren killed

Deadly Israeli airstrike prompts comments by Ismail Haniyeh, as two sides remain far apart on key issues

Three sons and at least two grandchildren of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, the exiled political chief of the militant group has said from his base in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Haniyeh told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that his children Hazem, Amir and Mohammed and several of their children were visiting relatives for Eid at the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza when their car was targeted in an Israeli airstrike. Sixty of his relatives had been killed in the six-month-old war, he said, including 14 who died after an Israeli airstrike hit the family home in Gaza City in October.

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British Muslims describe Eid festivities as ‘heavy’ due to Gaza conflict

Thousands of Muslims in Rafah attend Eid prayers outside ruins of mosque

Millions of Muslims across the UK celebrated Eid on Wednesday after the first sighting of the new crescent moon, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The Baitul Futuh mosque in London, one of the largest in Europe, welcomed more than 5,000 people to pray and celebrate the three-day festival, one of the most important holidays in the Islamic calendar.

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End of the Line? Saudi Arabia ‘forced to scale back’ plans for desert megacity

Crown prince’s pet project was sold as a 105-mile-long city of the future, but finances may have led to a rethink

It was billed as a glass-walled city of the future, an ambitious centrepiece of the economic plan backed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to transition Saudi Arabia away from oil dependency.

Now, however, plans for the mirror-clad desert metropolis called the Line have been scaled down and the project, which was envisaged to stretch 105 miles (170km) is expected to reach just a mile and a half by 2030.

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Middle East crisis live: Israel threatens to strike Iran directly – as it happened

Israel’s foreign minister says Israel will attack Iran directly if Tehran launches an attack from its territory

The commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (Unifil), Aroldo Lazaro, said on Wednesday the danger of escalation on the Lebanon-Israel border was real, reports Reuters.

“Unifil calls for a return to the cessation of hostilities, and a move towards a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict,” Lazaro said in a statement.

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Students in Iran threatened with prosecution for graduation dance video

Al-Zahra University in Bushehr will pursue legal action, says its president, in a move labelled ‘absurd’ by human rights lawyers

A group of Iranian students have been threatened with prosecution after a video of them dancing after their graduation emerged on social media this week.

In the now viral video, a group of about 11 female students from Al-Zahra University in the coastal city of Bushehr, in south-west Iran, were seen dancing and riding a motorcycle.

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Wednesday briefing: Israel turns on Netanyahu – but is it enough to end his premiership?

In today’s newsletter: Despite protests and the fact that almost three-quarters of Israelis want the PM to quit, huge obstacles stand in the way of his exit

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Good morning. Almost three-quarters of the Israeli public want Benjamin Netanyahu to resign as prime minister. More than two-thirds say he is handling the war in Gaza badly. And more than half think his government is not doing enough to bring the Israeli hostages held by Hamas home.

Now the ultranationalists he relies on to prop up his fragile coalition are warning that they will bring the government down if he does not go ahead with a major assault on Rafah – and the opposition leaders who joined his war cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, are coming under increasing pressure to step down. With tens of thousands of people joining renewed protests calling for Netanyahu’s removal, his political prospects would appear to be dire.

Gender identity | Thousands of vulnerable children questioning their gender identity have been let down by the NHS providing unproven treatments and by the “toxicity” of the trans debate, a landmark report has found. Read the key findings, an interview with author Dr Hilary Cass, and views from young trans people and their families.

Israel-Gaza latest | David Cameron has confirmed the UK government will not suspend arms exports to Israel after the killing of seven aid workers in an airstrike on Gaza last week. The foreign secretary said that he had reviewed the most recent legal advice about the situation on the ground, but this left the UK’s position on export licences “unchanged”.

Politics | William Wragg has resigned the Conservative party whip days after admitting to giving out colleagues’ personal phone numbers to someone he had met on a dating app. Wragg, who represents Hazel Grove, will now sit as an independent MP.

Museums | A staff member who put his own art on display at Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne has been fired. The 51-year-old man had smuggled his work “in the hope of achieving his artistic breakthrough”.

Peter Higgs | Nobel prize-winning physicist, Peter Higgs, who proposed a new particle known as the Higgs boson, has died. Higgs was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 2013 for his work in 1964 showing how the boson helped bind the universe together by giving particles their mass.

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Netanyahu making a ‘mistake’ on Gaza, says Biden, as he urges Israel to push for ceasefire

US president gives some of his strongest criticism of Israeli PM yet, saying he needs to ‘empower’ Israel’s negotiators to call for a truce

US president Joe Biden has said prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach on Gaza was a “mistake” and urged Israel to call for a ceasefire, in an interview that aired on Tuesday.

Biden’s comments were some of his strongest criticism yet of Netanyahu amid growing tensions over the civilian death toll from Israel’s war on Hamas and dire conditions inside Gaza.

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Bahrain’s king takes activists by surprise with pardon for at least 1,500 prisoners

Released detainees include some jailed for political reasons and is UK ally’s biggest amnesty since Arab spring

Bahrain has unconditionally released more than 1,500 prisoners, including political detainees, in the biggest royal pardon since the 2011 Arab spring uprising.

The amnesty followed years of campaigning inside the country and by international human rights groups but came as a complete surprise to activists.

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UK will not suspend arms exports to Israel, David Cameron says

Foreign secretary says Britain’s position on export licences is ‘unchanged’ after reviewing latest legal advice

David Cameron has confirmed the UK government will not suspend arms exports to Israel after the killing of seven aid workers in an airstrike on Gaza last week, as he insisted the UK would continue to act within international law.

The foreign secretary said that he had reviewed the most recent legal advice about the situation on the ground but this left the UK’s position on export licences “unchanged”.

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Israel’s security at core of German foreign policy due to Holocaust, ICJ hears

Nicaragua asks UN’s highest court to halt German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is breaching obligation to prevent genocide

Germany has said Israel’s security is at “the core” of its foreign policy because of the history of the Holocaust, but denied accusations at the UN’s highest court that is aiding genocide in Gaza by arming Israel.

Nicaragua has brought a case against Germany at the international court of justice (ICJ) urging judges to order a halt to German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is in breach of its obligation to prevent genocide and ensure respect of international humanitarian law.

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Unrwa vital to avert starvation in Gaza, says agency official

Comments by Sam Rose, of the UN body for Palestinian refugees, come amid fears Israel plans to squeeze agency out of Gaza

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees must remain “the backbone of any humanitarian response” for the 2 million people in Gaza if mass starvation is to be avoided, the Unrwa director of planning, Sam Rose, says.

Israel is continuing to impede Unrwa convoys to northern Gaza, where 300,000 people are facing famine, he said. “Our space is continuing to be squeezed at a time when the international community urgently needs to get as much assistance as possible to people in the north.”

Guardian Newsroom: Crisis in the Middle East
On Tuesday 30 April, 7-8.15pm GMT, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont, Emma Graham-Harrison and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

Continue reading...

Middle East crisis live: Netanyahu says date for Rafah invasion has been set with Israel buying 40,000 tents for evacuations

Israeli PM says Rafah invasion will go ahead as official says tents are part of evacuation plan

Recent tragedies in Gaza are not a reason to “walk away from Israel”, the former British home secretary, Suella Braverman, said.

Asked if the UK should still be selling arms to Israel, Braverman told LBC: “I don’t think the fact that these tragedies happen is a reason to walk away from Israel, and to stop selling arms to Israel, because of that broader battle that they are engaging with.”

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‘Hell on Earth’: famine nears in northern Gaza despite Israeli aid pledges

Doctors describe rise in infections and amputations among dangerously malnourished patients

Every morning, starving mothers arrive at the doors of al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza desperately seeking baby formula. Many mothers of newborns are unable to breastfeed, the head of the hospital said, because they are so underfed.

Inside the hospital, where doctors are undergoing treatment for malnutrition alongside their patients, surgeons say they are carrying out increasing numbers of amputations owing to the effects of acute hunger.

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David Cameron to set out UK basis for continuing arms sales to Israel

Foreign secretary’s intervention comes as pressure grows on ministers to reveal legal advice over Gaza conflict

David Cameron will set out the UK’s reasoning for continuing to export arms to Israel on Tuesday as ministers face ongoing pressure to disclose the official legal advice on the trade.

The foreign secretary will discuss the Middle East crisis with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, on a visit to Washington where he is also expected to give an update on the UK’s arms export regime.

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Susan Sarandon, Olivia Colman and Paul Mescal join star donors of Cinema for Gaza auction

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gives jam as swathe of film and TV celebrities add support, including Zone of Interest’s Jonathan Glazer and Thor’s Tessa Thompson

A host of film directors and stars, including Susan Sarandon, Paul Mescal and Olivia Colman, have added their names to those offering time and memorabilia to a Cinema for Gaza auction that is raising funds for humanitarian relief in Palestine.

Joining the celebrities is the former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn – billed as the star of Sumotherhood, thanks to his cameo in last year’s Adam Deacon urban thriller – who is donating a Zoom poetry reading and a selection of homemade jam.

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Home Office refusal of Gaza family reunion requests ‘irrational’, judge rules

Families brought legal challenge after Home Office refused to decide on reunion applications without biometric data

Families in Gaza have won a legal case against the Home Office after a judge ruled the department’s decisions were a “disproportionate interference” in their right to a family life.

Two challenges were brought against the Home Office in February this year after it refused to decide on family reunion applications from families in Gaza without biometric data, including fingerprints and photographs.

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