Foreign News

Israel confirms latest body returned from Gaza is dead hostage

Published

6 months ago

2025/10/18

Priyan

Eliyahu Margalit was killed on 7 October, the Israeli military said [BBC]

Israel’s military has confirmed that the latest remains handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza and returned to Israel are those of a dead hostage.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the returned hostage is Eliyahu Margalit, 75, who was killed on 7 October and his body taken into Gaza from Nir Oz kibbutz.

His death was announced by Israel in December 2023, a month after his daughter Nili – who was also taken hostage – was released during a temporary truce.

Mr Margalit, who was known to his family and friends as Churchill, is the 10th dead hostage to be returned from Gaza. The remains of another 18 people have yet to be repatriated.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement on Friday night that its team had taken “all possible measures to ensure the deceased are managed with respect”, and that Israeli forensic authorities would identify the remains in Tel Aviv.

There has been fury in Israel that Hamas has not returned all of the bodies, in line with last week’s ceasefire deal – though the US has downplayed the suggestion it amounts to a breach.

On Friday night, the IDF again stressed that Hamas must “uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the hostages”.

Hamas has said it remains committed to the ceasefire, including “keenness to hand over all remaining corpses”.

It has blamed Israel for making the task difficult because Israeli strikes have reduced so many buildings to rubble and it does not allow heavy machinery and diggers into Gaza to be able to search for the hostages’ bodies.

UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC News Channel that the Gaza Strip “is now a wasteland”, with people picking through the rubble for bodies and trying to find their homes – many of which have been flattened.

He added that aid agencies have “an enormous job ahead of us to stabilise the situation, to stop the starvation, to get the hospitals open, to get the kids back in school”.

“We’ve started to do that and we’re having an impact already but being here on the ground, it’s an overwhelming task,” he said, speaking from Gaza City.

As part of the US-brokered ceasefire deal, Israel freed 250 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.

After Hamas said it was unable to retrieve all the bodies, two senior Trump advisers said preparations to move to the next phase of the ceasefire deal were continuing.

The advisers told reporters that the US government did not so far believe that Hamas had broken the agreement by not retrieving more remains, and said the group had acted in good faith by sharing information with interlocutors.

While the full text of the agreement between Israel and Hamas has not been made public, a leaked version which appeared in Israel media appeared to allow for the possibility that not all of the bodies would be immediately accessible.

Speaking about their role in brokering the ceasefire, US special envoy Steve Witkoff told CBS News’s 60 Minutes programme that President Donald Trump had felt “like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing” after it targeted Hamas leaders in an air strike in Qatar in September.

Following the strike in Doha, in which five lower-level Hamas members and a Qatari officer were killed, Witkoff said Trump had felt “it was time to be very strong and stop them [Israel] from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests”.

Witkoff, who led the US team at the talks alongside Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, said they had felt “a little bit betrayed” by the Israeli move.

“We had lost the confidence of the Qataris. And so Hamas went underground, and it was very, very difficult to get to them,” Witkoff told the US network.

Qatar, a key US ally, has played an important mediating role in ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 others hostage.

At least 67,967 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen by the UN as reliable.

[BBC]

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Foreign News

Iran says it downed two US jets as search for one pilot continues

Published

20 hours ago

2026/04/4

Priyan

Media representatives gather in front of a heavily damaged building following a strike at the Azadi Sport Complex in Tehran ]Aljazeera]

Iranian forces have said they struck down two fighter jets belonging to the United States military, one over the southwest part of the country and another around the Strait of Hormuz.

A spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said on Friday that air defences completely destroyed one F-15 jet. Later in the day, the Iranian military said it targeted an A-10 US aircraft that crashed into the Gulf.

The New York Times had cited unidentified officials as saying that the A10’s pilot was safe after the crash.

But the fate of at least one pilot from the downed F-15 crew is unknown. Several US media outlets reported that one crew member of the jet was located and rescued by US forces, but the other remains missing.

US President Donald Trump told NBC News on Friday that the downing of the jet will not affect the prospect of talks with Tehran. “No, not at all. No, it’s war. We’re in war,” he said.

State media outlets in Iran showed photos of the wreckage of the F-15 jet and what appears to be an ejection seat with an attached parachute.

After the jet was downed, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf mocked Trump’s repeated claims of victory in the war.

“After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’” Ghalibaf wrote in a social media post.

There was no immediate comment on the incident from the Pentagon and US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East and much of Asia.

[Aljazeera]

Foreign News

Trump fires Pam Bondi as US attorney general, elevates Todd Blanche

Published

2 days ago

2026/04/3

Priyan

Attorney General Pam Bondi is seen during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, DC, the United States [Aljazeera]

United States President Donald Trump has announced that Pam Bondi is out as US attorney general, in his second major cabinet-level shake-up in less than a month.

Trump confirmed the decision in a post on Truth Social on Thursday, after a slate of media reports suggested he was considering removing Bondi from the top law enforcement role. Several cited his discontent over Bondi’s handling of investigative files related to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will temporarily replace Bondi in an interim capacity, he said.

“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump wrote.

The US president also praised Bondi for leading the Department of Justice during a period when violent crime decreased in the US, part of a wider downward trend in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump did not mention his reasoning for the decision, instead writing, “We love Pam.” He added that she would be “transitioning to a much-needed and important new job in the private sector”.

In a statement, Bondi said she would be transitioning the office to Blanche over the next month, adding she was moving to “an important private sector role I am thrilled about, and where I will continue fighting for President Trump and this Administration”.

“I remain eternally grateful for the trust that President Trump placed in me to Make America Safe Again,” she said.

Bondi’s dismissal comes shortly after Trump abruptly fired Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversaw the agency amid a mass deportation campaign that led to the killing of two US citizens.

[Aljazeera]

Foreign News

One ant for $220: the new frontier of wildlife trafficking

Published

7 days ago

2026/03/29

Priyan

Giant African harvester ants - seen here in Kenya - are popular with hobby collectors around the world (BBC

The ants are flying in Kenya at the moment

During this rainy season, swarms can be seen leaving the thousands of anthills in and around Gilgil, a quiet agricultural town in Kenya’s Rift Valley that has emerged as the centre of a booming illegal trade.

The mating ritual sees winged males leave the nest to impregnate queens, who also take flight at this time. This makes it the perfect time to chase down queen ants to sell on to smugglers who are at the heart of a growing global black market, that taps into the pet craze for keeping ants in transparent enclosures designed to observe the insects as they busily build a colony.

It is the giant African harvester ant queens, which are large and coloured red, that are most prized by international ant collectors – one can fetch up to £170 ($220) on the black market, which tends to operate online.

A single fertilised queen is able to create a whole colony and can live for decades – and can be easily posted as scanners do not tend to detect organic material.

“At first, I did not even know it was illegal,” a man, who asked not to be named, told the BBC about how he had once acted as a broker, linking foreign buyers with local collection networks.

Also known as Messor cephalotes, these ants are native to East Africa and known for their distinctive seed-gathering behaviour making them popular with ant collectors.

“A friend told me a foreigner was paying good money for queen ants – the big red ones which are easily seen around here,” the former broker said.

“You look for the mounds near open fields, usually early morning before the heat. The foreigners never came to the fields themselves – they would wait in town, in a guest house or a car, and we would bring the ants to them packed in small tubes or syringes they supplied us with.”

The scale of the illicit trade in Kenya became apparent last year when 5,000 giant harvester ant queens – mainly collected around Gilgil – were found alive at a guest house in Naivasha, a nearby lakeside town popular with tourists.

The suspects – from Belgium, Vietnam and Kenya – had packed the test tubes and syringes with moist cotton wool, which would enable each ant to survive for two months, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).

The plan was to take them to Europe and Asia and put them up for sale.

This trade in ants has caught scientists and the authorities by surprise.

The East African nation is more accustomed to high-profile wildlife crimes involving elephant tusks and rhino horns.

UK based retailer Ants RbUs described the giant African harvester ant as “many peoples dream species” – though the queens are currently out of stock, with the site explaining that it is very hard for retailers to source them.

“Even I, as an entomologist, have been surprised at the extent of the apparent trade,” Dino Martins, a biologist based in Kenya, where there are around 600 kinds of ants, told the BBC.

However, he can understand the fascination with East Africa’s harvester, with colonies created by a “foundress queen”, who can grow up to 25mm (0.98 inches) and who produces eggs throughout her life.

“They are one of the most enigmatic species of ants – they form large colonies, engage in interesting behaviours and are easy to keep. They are not aggressive.”

During the swarming he says the queens mate with several males.

“Then that is it for the males – their job is done… most are eaten by predators or die,” the entomologist says, going on to explain how the queen then scurries away to dig a small burrow and begin laying eggs to start her empire.

Her workers and soldier ants, those that protect the nest, are all female and will eventually number in the hundreds of thousands.

“Nests can live for over 50 years, perhaps even up to 70 years. I personally know of nests near Nairobi that are at least 40 years old as I’ve been visiting them for that long,” said Martins.

This means the queens live that long too – because as soon as she dies, the colony collapses and any surviving workers will look for another nest.

Kenyans who have had to deal with ants raiding their crops or invading their houses know this well – and to get rid of a colony someone is sent in to locate the queen, often hidden deep in one of the tunnels or chambers of an ant mound.

The former broker said ants could also be harvested by gently disturbing the mound and collecting them as they tried to escape.

“It was only when I saw the arrests on the news that I realised what I had been part of – and I immediately quit,” he said.

Those arrested were convicted on charges of biopiracy and ordered to pay fines or serve 12 months in jail – they opted to pay the $7,700 fee and the foreign nationals left the country.

Two weeks ago, a Chinese national – the alleged mastermind behind last year’s ring and who is said to have escaped using a different passport, was arrested at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyata International Airport with another 2,000 queen ants packed in test tubes and tissue rolls.

For Zhengyang Wang, who was part of a team of researchers who published a report on the ant trade in 2023 focusing on China, this is a worry and could “wreak havoc” with local ecosystems.

“Initially, we were very excited when we learnt that many people have taken up keeping ants,” Wang, assistant professor at Sichuan University, told the BBC.

“A colony of pet ants are often kept in a formicarium, which is basically a transparent plastic box so that keepers can observe colonies at work, digging tunnels, collecting food, and guarding their queen. I’d say it’s quite charming and… can be a good way of educating people about insects and their behaviour.

“But then we realised, wait, isn’t keeping invasive species incredibly dangerous?”

Monitoring online sales – of more than 58,000 colonies – in China over six months, the researchers found that more than a quarter of the traded species were not native to China – despite it being illegal to import them.

“If the trade volume of invasive ants continues to grow, it’s only a matter of time before a few escape from their formicaria and become established in the wild,” said Wang.

The study he worked on, published in the journal Biological Conservation, explained what could happen in the case of giant African harvester, one of the most traded species in China: “For example, Messor cephalotes, an East African native, is among the largest seed harvesters in the world and could potentially disrupt predominantly grain-based agriculture in south-eastern China.”

The environmental consequences are also a concern in Kenya.

“Harvester ants are both keystone species and ecosystem engineers. They harvest seeds of grasses, and other plants and in so doing also help to disperse the seeds,” said Martins, adding that the insects “create a more healthy and dynamic grassland”.

Mukonyi Watai, a senior scientist at Kenya’s Wildlife Research and Training Institute, shares these fears.

“Unsustainable harvesting – particularly the removal of queen ants – can lead to colony collapse, disrupting ecosystems and threatening biodiversity,” he told the BBC.

It is possible to collect ants legally in Kenya – in line with various international treaties – with a special permit, which would require the buyer to sign a benefit-sharing agreement with the local community involved to split any profits.

But, according to the KWS, so far none have been applied for – with the paperwork also requiring details of how many ants are being collected and their destination.

Getty Images A young man holds tweezers as he places something in a formicarium

Some conservationists are now calling for greater trade protections for all ant species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), the global wildlife trade treaty.

“The reality is that no ant species is currently listed under Cites,” Sérgio Henriques, a researcher into the global ant trade, told the BBC.

“Without international treaties monitoring these movements, the scale of the trade remains largely invisible to policy makers and the global community,” he said.

But for the KWS the real problem is more immediate – how to monitor and clamp down on “under-reported” insect trafficking, with the agency suggesting better surveillance equipment at airports and others border points would be a good start.

Martins agrees: “It is likely only a fraction of the actual ants being traded that are being detected, so one can only guess at the scale for now.”

Journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo argues that Kenya is overlooking a significant global revenue opportunity.

“The ants are not finite items like gold or diamonds. They are biological assets that can be bred and farmed, and their production can be scaled up to thousand a day. Yet we treat them like stolen artefacts,” he recently wrote in Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.

In fact, Kenya’s cabinet did approve policy guidelines last year aimed at commercialising the wildlife economy, including the ant trade.

“The guidelines seek to promote sustainable use trade of wild species such as ants to generate jobs, wealth and community livelihoods across all the counties,” said Watai.

With careful monitoring in place, it could be that future farmers around Gilgil will have special formicaria on their land expanding the yields from their fields and orchards – full of vegetables and fruits – to include lucrative queen ants.

But the debate over the dangers of exporting ants to hobby collectors in different parts of the world is yet to be settled.