Israel confirms 4 hostages killed in Gaza, military investigating circumstances of deaths
The Israeli military on Monday confirmed the deaths of four more hostages held by Hamas — including three older men seen in a Hamas video begging for their release.
The three men were were identified as Chaim Peri, 80, Yoram Metzger, 80, and Amiram Cooper, 84. Looking weak and wary, they appeared in a video in December released by Hamas under the title, “Don’t let us grow old here.”
The fourth hostage was identified as 51-year-old Nadav Popplewell.
Israel’s military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the four men died together in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis when Israel was operating there a “number of months” ago.
The military said Monday that the decision to pronounce the men dead was based on intelligence and confirmed by health officials and Israel’s chief rabbi.
The cause of their deaths was not immediately known, but Hagari acknowledged “there are a lot of questions.”
“We are thoroughly examining the circumstances of their deaths and checking all possibilities. We will present soon the findings, first to their families, and then to the public,” he said. “We will present them with transparency, as we have done until now.”
Israel carried out a major offensive in Khan Younis, a Hamas stronghold, early this year. Hamas claimed in May that Popplewell had died after being wounded in an Israeli airstrike, but provided no evidence.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says four hostages were likely killed in Khan Younis several months ago, during a period the IDF were mobilized in the area. He offered condolences to the families of the hostages Haim Peri, Yoram Metzger, Amiram Cooper and Nadav Popplewell.
Men taken alive during attacks
Cooper, Metzger and Peri were featured in a Hamas propaganda video in which Peri, clearly under duress, said in the video that all three men had chronic illnesses and accused Israel of abandoning them.
Peri was at his house in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas attack. He tried to repel the gunmen while hiding his wife behind a sofa, his son later told Reuters. He eventually gave himself up to save his wife, who remained hidden, his son said.
Cooper and Metzger, also from Nir Oz, were captured along with their wives, both of whom were returned to Israel during a brief November truce.
Cooper was an economist and one of the founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, according to the Hostages Forum, a grassroots group representing the families of the hostages. Metzger helped found the kibbutz winery, and Peri built the community’s art gallery and sculpture garden.
Nir Oz was among the hardest-hit towns near the border with Gaza during the Oct. 7 attack.
Popplewell, according to the Hostages Forum, was captured with his mother from her home in Kibbutz Nirim. His brother was killed during the attack. His mother was freed during the November truce.
On Oct. 7, Hamas-led militants took some 250 hostages back to Gaza. Roughly half were released during a brief ceasefire period in November, in an exchange for Israel releasing 240 Palestinians detained in its prisons.
There are some 130 hostages remaining in Gaza. About 85 are believed to still be alive, alongside the remains of 43 others.
The news late Monday came after an announcement earlier in the day that the body of a presumed hostage, Dolev Yehud, 35, was found in a community near the Gaza border that militants had attacked on Oct. 7.
Yehud was thought to be among scores of hostages held in Gaza until Monday, when the military announced the discovery of his body and said he had been killed in the initial attack.
According to Israel, around 1,200 people were killed during the Hamas-led attack. Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
Newly released video shows the capture of young female Israeli soldiers during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks. Families of hostages desperate for their return pushed to have the video made public.
Hostages group demands ceasefire agreement
In the days since the Biden administration announced the ceasefire proposal Friday, Israel has seen some of its largest protests calling on its government to bring the hostages home.
Israeli leadership has appeared to brush aside U.S. President Joe Biden’s proposal, vowing to keep conducting military operations against Hamas until the militant group is destroyed.
The Hostages Forum said the killings of the four men are “a mark of disgrace and a sad reflection on the significance of delaying previous deals.”
“It is time to end this cycle of sacrifice and neglect,” the group wrote in a statement calling on the government to approve the new plan.
U.S. President Joe Biden is backing an apparent Israeli proposal that could end its war with Hamas. The three-phase plan also calls for the release of all hostages, and rebuilding Gaza.
Published at Mon, 03 Jun 2024 18:51:24 +0000
Claudia Sheinbaum wins landslide to become Mexico’s 1st woman president
Claudia Sheinbaum will become Mexico’s first female president, inheriting the project of her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador whose popularity among the poor helped drive her triumph.
Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with between 58.3 per cent and 60.7 per cent of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico’s electoral authority. That is set to be the highest vote percentage in Mexico’s democratic history.
Sheinbaum is the first woman to win a general election in the United States, Mexico or Canada.
The ruling coalition was also on track for a possible two-thirds super majority in both houses of Congress, which would allow the coalition to pass constitutional reforms without opposition support, according to the range of results given by the electoral authority.
On her way to vote on Sunday morning, Sheinbaum told journalists it was a “historic day” and that she felt at ease and content. Her victory represents a major step for Mexico, a country known for its macho culture, with her six-year term beginning Oct. 1 once results are finalized.
Mexico’s largest-ever elections have also been the most violent in modern history, with the killing of 38 candidates. The deadly violence has stoked concerns about the threat of warring drug cartels to democracy. On Sunday, two people were killed at polling stations in Puebla state.
Sheinbaum, who has led convincingly in opinion polls over her main competitor Xochitl Galvez, will be tasked with confronting organized crime violence. More people have been killed during the mandate of outgoing president Lopez Obrador than during any other administration in Mexico’s modern history, although the homicide rate has come down over his term.
2 dead on Sunday
The violence was not limited to candidates. Two people were killed in violence at polling centres on Sunday as people cast their ballots.
Voting was suspended at one polling place after a person was killed in a shooting in Coyomeapan, a town in the state of Puebla, the state electoral authority reported in the afternoon. The state attorney general confirmed another death at a polling centre in Tlanalapan, also in Puebla.
The deadly violence stoked concerns about the threat of warring drug cartels to democracy.
Galvez, a senator who represents an opposition coalition comprised of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the right-wing PAN and the leftist PRD party, chatted with supporters before casting her ballot early Sunday.
“God is with me,” Galvez said, adding that she was expecting a difficult day.
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor of policy and government at Virginia’s George Mason University, says incoming Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has solid experience and a voter-backed vision — but will be facing major issues around security and corruption that must be addressed.
There were long lines of voters outside polling places, even before they opened at 8 a.m. local time, with some reports of delayed openings.
“It seems like a dream to me. I never imagined that one day I would vote for a woman,” said 87-year-old Edelmira Montiel, a Sheinbaum supporter in Mexico’s smallest state of Tlaxcala.
“Before we couldn’t even vote, and when you could, it was to vote for the person your husband told you to vote for. Thank God that has changed and I get to live it,” Montiel added.
Almost 100 million Mexicans were eligible to vote in Sunday’s election. Other key positions were also up for grabs, including eight governorships and both chambers of Congress.
‘Flooded with blood’
“The country is flooded with blood as a result of so much corruption,” said Rosa Maria Baltazar, 69, a voter in Mexico City’s upper-middle-class Del Valle neighbourhood. “I wish for a change of government for my country, something for a better life.”
Lopez Obrador loomed over the campaign, seeking to turn the vote into a referendum on his political agenda. Sheinbaum has rejected opposition claims that she would be his “puppet,” though she has pledged to continue many of his policies including those that have helped Mexico’s poorest.
Video from the scene obtained by Reuters shows people running and screaming after a stage collapsed in San Pedro Garza Garcia, in Nuevo Leon, Mexico.
Challenges ahead for Sheinbaum also include addressing electricity and water shortages and luring manufacturers to relocate as part of the nearshoring trend, in which companies move supply chains closer to their main markets. The election winner also will have to wrestle with what to do with Pemex, the state oil giant that has seen production decline for two decades and is drowning in debt.
Both candidates promised to expand welfare programs, though Mexico has a large deficit this year and sluggish GDP growth of just 1.5 per cent expected by the central bank next year.
Sheinbaum will also face tense negotiations with the United States over the huge flows of U.S.-bound migrants crossing Mexico and security co-operation over drug trafficking at a time when the U.S. fentanyl epidemic rages.
Mexican officials expect these negotiations to be more difficult if the U.S. presidency is won by Donald Trump in November.
Trump, the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, has vowed to impose 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese cars made in Mexico and said he would mobilize special forces to fight the cartels.
Winning with an approximated 58 to 60 per cent of the vote, Claudia Sheinbaum will become Mexico’s first female president, much to the glee of her supporters who celebrated her victory deep into the night. Women and minority groups of Mexico see her triumph as a step forward for a country that has long promoted traditional values and roles for women, as it is home to the world’s second largest Roman Catholic population.
Published at Mon, 03 Jun 2024 02:00:37 +0000
