Kidnapping and Hostages

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      New Israeli Evacuation Order in Gaza Displaces Palestinians Again

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      The order affected part of southern Gaza, while farther north, the Israeli military struck the grounds of a school it said was being used by Hamas, killing more than 30 people, Gaza officials said.The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of several neighborhoods in southern Gaza on Saturday, the latest in a series of such directives recently that have forced tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians to relocate yet again.The decision affects an area around the city of Khan Younis that Israel had previously designated a “humanitarian zone” for Palestinian civilians, who are weary from nearly a year of unrelenting war and a daily struggle to avoid disease and find enough food and clean water to survive.“People aren’t being regarded as people,” said Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, the main United Nations agency providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza. “They’re being treated as pinballs and chess pieces.”The Israeli military said its recent evacuations and operations in Khan Younis have targeted a renewed Hamas insurgency and accused Hamas of installing weapons infrastructure in the area under the latest evacuation order on Saturday.Over the past week, amid new evacuation orders, more than 190,000 people have fled the places where they were sheltering in southern and central Gaza, the United Nations said on Friday.Dozens of people have been killed in fighting in the area, according to both Israel and Palestinian health officials. The Israeli military said on Friday that its forces had killed more than 100 militants in Khan Younis in recent days, while Palestinian health officials have said that at least some casualties arriving at local hospitals with severe blast wounds have been women and children.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Retrieves Bodies of 5 Hostages From Tunnel in Gaza

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      The military said that intelligence, including information from detained Palestinian militants, had led to the bodies in the Khan Younis area.Israeli forces retrieved the bodies of five hostages from a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, the military said on Thursday, amid growing international and domestic pressure for a cease-fire deal that would lead to the release of the remaining captives.The bodies were found on Wednesday in a zone around the city of Khan Younis that Israel previously designated as a humanitarian area where Gazan civilians could go to avoid the fighting and to receive aid, the military said. The tunnel shaft was nearly 220 yards long and more than 20 yards underground, with several rooms, the military said.Israel has said that Hamas — which led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that prompted the war in Gaza — has exploited the designated humanitarian zone to launch rockets at Israel, as well as to use it for other military purposes. Aid groups have lamented that Israel has struck the area despite telling Gazans they would be safer there. Hamas had no immediate response.The five hostages — Maya Goren, 56; Ravid Katz, 51; Oren Goldin, 33; Tomer Ahimas, 20; and Kiril Brodski, 19 — had already been presumed dead by Israeli officials.From left: Ravid Katz, Kiril Brodski, Tomer Ahimas, Oren Goldin and Maya Goren in photos provided by the Hostages Families Forum.Agence France-Presse, via The Hostages Families ForumMr. Brodski and Mr. Ahimas were soldiers who were killed during the Hamas-led attack in October, while the other three were civilians whose bodies were taken to Gaza as bargaining chips, Israeli officials said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Least 18 People Killed in Multiple Suicide Bombings in Nigeria

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      The emergency services said that three female attackers had detonated devices at a wedding and at a funeral in a city once ruled by Boko Haram. So far, no group has claimed responsibility.At least 18 people were killed and dozens of others were wounded in a series of suicide bombings on Saturday afternoon in northeastern Nigeria, including at the wedding of a young couple and at a funeral, according to local officials.Barkindo Saidu, the director general of Borno State’s emergency management agency, said that three female attackers had struck distinct locations in Gwoza, a bustling city in Borno State that has been the center of Islamist insurgency by Boko Haram over the past 15 years.The victims included children and pregnant women, Mr. Saidu said. Some Nigerian news outlets reported that at least 30 people had been killed.As of Sunday afternoon, no group had claimed responsibility for the bombings. The blasts resembled attacks carried out by Boko Haram, whose fighters have killed tens of thousands in Nigeria and whose aggression in the region has led to the displacement of more than two million people.The first attacker on Saturday detonated a bomb that she was wearing at a wedding celebration, Mr. Saidu said in a preliminary report seen by The New York Times. Seven people died in that explosion, including the attacker and a baby she had with her, according to Kenneth Daso, a public relations officer with the police in Borno. Two attackers struck later near a hospital and at the funeral services of a victim of the earlier blast, Mr. Saidu said.Among the seven people killed in the explosion at the wedding were three men, a high school teacher, an entrepreneur and a bicycle seller, said Baba Shehu Saidu, a friend of theirs and of the groom who said that he had planned to attend the wedding but had had to cancel at the last minute.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Haitian Gang Leader Is Sentenced to 35 Years in Prison in Gunrunning Scheme

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      Prosecutors said Joly Germine, 31, who had led the 400 Mawozo gang, was involved in a conspiracy that used ransom money that had been paid for the release of American hostages to buy and smuggle guns into Haiti.The former leader of a Haitian street gang was sentenced on Monday to 35 years in prison for his role in directing a gunrunning scheme that smuggled guns to Haiti using ransom money that had been paid for the release of American hostages, prosecutors said.Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sentenced the former gang leader, Joly Germine, 31, of Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, in a Washington courtroom.Mr. Germine, who was known as Yonyon as the leader of the 400 Mawozo gang in Haiti, pleaded guilty on Jan. 31 to a 48-count indictment that charged him with several crimes, including money laundering, smuggling and conspiracy to defraud the United States, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia said in a statement on Monday. The 35-year sentence does not address other charges of conspiracy to commit hostage taking that Mr. Germine also faces after the 400 Mawozo gang claimed responsibility in 2021 for taking 16 American hostages and one Canadian. The hostage-taking case, which Judge Bates is also overseeing, is to go to trial next year, court records show. After the 400 Mawozo gang took the 17 hostages in the fall of 2021, the gang sought a ransom of $1 million for each hostage, prosecutors said. (The hostages, who were part of a missionary group visiting an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, were all released or managed to escape by December.) The gang had also taken three Americans hostage in the summer of 2021, prosecutors said. It used some of the ransom money obtained in that scheme to buy at least 24 guns, including AR-15s and AK-47s, which were smuggled from the United States into Haiti, prosecutors said.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement on Monday that the money used in the gunrunning scheme had been “extorted from kidnapping American citizens.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Israeli Hostage Rescue, Minutes Made the Difference

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      When a truck carrying three of the four rescued hostages broke down and came under fire, Israel says it called in an airstrike. Scores of Palestinians, including children, were killed during the operation, according to Gazan officials.When the four Israelis woke up in Gaza on Saturday, they had been held hostage by Hamas for 245 days. The buildings in which they were being kept, two low-rise, concrete apartment blocks, looked much like the other nearby residences in a civilian neighborhood full of Palestinian families.Within a few hours, the captives, three men and one woman, would be reunited with their own families, the result of a risky, long-planned rescue operation in which the full might of the Israeli military would be used to devastating effect.“I’m so emotional,” one hostage, Noa Argamani, 26, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in a phone call after her release. “It’s been so long since I heard Hebrew.”The rescue effort in Nuseirat involved hundreds of intelligence officers and two teams of commandos who simultaneously stormed the homes in which the hostages were being held, the Israeli military said.In one apartment, where the male hostages were imprisoned, a firefight broke out between the soldiers and the Hamas guards, according to the military and video footage it released of the encounter. Later, and under a hail of gunfire, the truck in which three hostages and a wounded Israeli officer were being evacuated broke down and was surrounded by militants, Israeli officials said.In an effort to give the rescuers enough time and ample cover to get the captives to freedom, the military said, the air force began striking dozens of nearby targets. Many Palestinians became aware of the fighting only when they heard bombs exploding. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Other War: How Israel Scours Gaza for Clues About the Hostages

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      The rescue of four Israelis in Gaza in a ferocious assault over the weekend offered a glimpse into an ambitious intelligence operation aimed at bringing home those held by Hamas.The hostages in Gaza are being moved around, with Hamas shuttling some from one apartment to another to obscure their whereabouts, while others are believed to be in tunnels underground.All the while, at a “fusion cell” quietly formed in Israel last fall, American and Israeli intelligence and military analysts share imagery from drones and satellites, along with communications intercepts and any other information that comes their way that might offer a hint to the hostages’ locations.More than one war is being waged in the Gaza Strip.For the most part, the world sees the airstrikes and the ground invasion, which Israel says are aimed at dismantling Hamas and have reduced much of the territory to rubble, setting off a humanitarian crisis. But the rescue on Saturday of four hostages was a reminder that Israel and Hamas are engaged in another, less visible battle:The militants are determined to hold on to the hostages they seized during their deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, for use as human bargaining chips. The Israelis are determined to bring them home.For more than eight months, the militants have had the upper hand.Israeli and American officials say they do not know where many hostages are being held. And even when they do, in many cases, a rescue mission is simply not possible.To date, Israel has rescued a total of seven hostages, but the stark reality is that since the war began, more hostages have died, either in the fighting or at the hands of Hamas. Israel has recovered far more bodies than living hostages.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel’s Euphoria Over Hostage Rescue May Be Fleeting

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      The operation conducted by Israel’s military to free four hostages resulted in a high death toll among Palestinians and has not resolved the challenges facing the Israeli government.For months, Israelis had heard only about hostages being killed or declared dead in Gaza. The “lucky” families were those whose loved ones’ remains were retrieved by soldiers, at great risk, and brought home to Israel for burial.So the audacious rescue on Saturday of four living hostages instantly raised morale in Israel and offered at least a momentary victory for the country’s embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.But by Sunday, euphoria was already giving way to a harsher reality. The heavy air and ground assault that accompanied the rescue killed scores of Palestinians, including civilians, according to Gaza health officials, puncturing Israel’s claims that the operation was a resounding success, at least internationally. And the operation failed to resolve any of the deep dilemmas and challenges vexing the Israeli government, according to analysts.Eight months into its grinding war in Gaza, Israel still appears to be far from achieving its stated objectives of dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. And Israelis fear that time is running out for many of the hostages in Gaza. About a third of the 120 that remain have already been declared dead by Israeli authorities.Andrey Kozlov, center, and Almog Meir Jan, second from the right, two of four hostages who were rescued in Gaza, arriving in Ramat Gan, Israel, on Saturday.Tomer Appelbaum/Associated PressAt the same time, Israel’s leadership is grappling with an escalation of hostilities across the northern border with Lebanon and battling increasing international isolation and opprobrium over the war in Gaza, including allegations of genocide that are being heard by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Rescues 4 Hostages in Assault That Killed Scores of Gazans

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      The news was met with jubilation in Israel, where tensions over the hostages’ safety have been rising in recent months.Israeli soldiers and special operations police rescued four hostages from Gaza on Saturday amid a heavy air and ground assault and flew them back to Israel by helicopter to be reunited with their families. The news was met with jubilation in Israel, where anxieties over the fate of the roughly 120 remaining captives have been rising after eight months of war.Residents in the town of Nuseirat, where the hostages were being held, reported intense bombardments during the rescue operation. Khalil al-Daqran, an official at a hospital in the city, told reporters that scores of Palestinians had been killed and that the hospital’s wards and corridors were packed with the wounded.Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, told reporters the rescue mission took place around 11 a.m. Saturday, when forces located the four hostages in two separate buildings where they were being held by Hamas militants. He said the Israeli forces came under fire but managed to extract the hostages in two helicopters. One special forces police officer died.The freed hostages — Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41 — were kidnapped by Palestinian militants from the Nova music festival during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 250 taken hostage, Israel says. All four were in good medical condition and were transferred to a hospital in Israel for further examinations, the Israeli authorities said in a statement.Almog Meir Jan embracing loved ones on Saturday in Ramat Gan, Israel, in a photograph released by the Israeli Army.Israeli Army, via ReutersThe fate of the hostages has been a source of intense political pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, amid the broader criticism that his government, for its own reasons, is in no hurry to wind down the conflict or to address the issue of who should govern Gaza after the war.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More