Thousands of Israelis on Saturday rallied in Tel Aviv to demand urgent government action to bring home hostages held in Gaza, after the bodies of several were retrieved.
Protesters observed a minute’s silence in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” in honor of the captives whose bodies were recovered by Israeli troops this month, a correspondent reported.
The army on Friday said that troops had retrieved the bodies of three hostages in an overnight operation in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.
Photo: AFP
The remains of Chanan Yablonka, Brazilian-Israeli Michel Nisenbaum and French-Mexican Orion Hernandez Radoux “were rescued” and their families notified after forensic identification, the military said in a statement.
“In just a few hours, I will bury my 42-year-old brother... I feared this moment,” Yablonka’s sister Avivit said at the rally.
“My brother, I promise you that I will continue to shout, support, fight and do everything so that all the hostages return home safely,” she said. “They must be taken out of this hell now.”
The bodies of four other hostages, Ron Benjamin, Yitzhak Gelerenter, Shani Louk and Amit Buskila, were recovered last week.
Another protest, calling for the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an early election, was held nearby.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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