GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Two Hamas sources told AFP that some of the hostages seized in the October 7 raids on Israel were on Friday handed over to the Red Cross for return to Israel, via Egypt.
“Half an hour ago, the prisoners were handed to the Red Cross who will take them to the Egyptians” at the Rafah crossing, one of the sources said.
“They were handed over to the Egyptian side,” the source added.
A source in the military wing of Hamas confirmed the handover, adding: “This is the first group under the agreement.”

CAIRO: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Friday appeared to discredit the moribund Israel-Palestinian peace process and instead called on the international community to recognize the Palestinian state.
During a joint news conference with the prime ministers of Spain and Belgium in Cairo, El-Sisi said reviving the process aimed at ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict “may not be what is required.”
“The results of this path faltering for 30 years tells us that we must” adopt a different approach, he said.

BAGHDAD: US forces were attacked four times in Iraq and Syria on Thursday with rockets and armed drones, but there were no casualties or damage to infrastructure, a USmilitary official said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said US and international forces were attacked at two sites in northeastern Syria with multiple rockets and a one-way attack drone.
In Iraq, multiple one-way drones were launched at the Ain Al-Asad air base west of Baghdad and a drone was launched at a base housing US forces near Irbil airport in northern Iraq.

ANKARA: Turkiye began discussing buying 40 Eurofighter Typhoon jets with European states after it saw that its request for F-16 aircraft from the US may not work out, a Turkish Defense Ministry source said on Thursday.

Defense Minister Yasar Guler said last week that Turkiye was in talks with Britain and Spain to buy Eurofighter Typhoon jets, though Germany objected.

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group fired dozens of rockets at military posts in northern Israel on Thursday, a day after an Israeli airstrike on a home in southern Lebanon killed five of the group’s senior fighters, including the son of a Hezbollah MP who leads the party’s bloc in parliament.

The attacks were among the most intense since the conflict on Lebanon’s southern border began on Oct. 8.