Region

ISTANBUL — Forty-three people remained stranded in mid-air on Saturday, hours after a pylon supporting cable cars collapsed outside the southern Turkish resort city of Antalya killing one person, rescue services said.

Ten people were injured in the accident, which happened late Friday afternoon, after one cable car in the Sarisu-Tunektepe system plummeted into a rocky area, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.

A total of 128 passengers were rescued from 16 cable cars but 43 remained stranded by the morning, Turkey’s disaster and emergency management agency Afad said.

Seven helicopters and more than 500 rescuers, including specialist mountaineers, were at the scene, authorities said.

The justice ministry said an investigation had been opened into the cause of the accident.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Hams and Israel both dampened hopes on Monday of a speedy breakthrough in Cairo talks towards a Gaza truce and hostage release deal after Egyptian state-linked media had reported "significant progress".

As the Gaza war raged on into a seventh month, Israel is under growing international pressure to agree to a ceasefire, including from its top ally and arms supplier the United States.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on Sunday — half a year after the October 7 sudden attack — that Israel is "one step away from victory" and has vowed to defeat remaining Hamas fighters in Gaza's far-southern Rafah city.

On the same day however, the army also announced it had pulled its forces out of southern Gaza, although military commanders stressed the withdrawal was tactical and did not signal an end to the war.

Defence minister Yoav Gallant said the troops would “prepare for future missions, including ... in Rafah” on the Egyptian border where almost 1.5 million Gazans live in crowded shelters and tents.

Amid the threats and ongoing fighting, Netanyahu has sent negotiators to fresh truce talks that started in Cairo on Sunday, joined by US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

US President Joe Biden sent CIA chief Bill Burns to the talks, three days after a terse phone call with Netanyahu in which Biden demanded a halt to the fighting and greater steps to help and protect Gaza civilians.

Egypt’s state-linked news outlet Al Qahera reported “significant progress being made on several contentious points of agreement”, citing an unnamed high-ranking Egyptian source.

The Qatari and Hamas delegations had left Cairo and were expected to return “within two days to finalise the terms of the agreement”, it said, while the US and Israeli teams were also planning 48 hours of consultations.

However, Israel’s Ynet news outlet cited an unidentified Israeli official as tempering the upbeat Egyptian report and stressing that “we still don’t see a deal on the horizon”.

“The distance is still great and there has been nothing dramatic in the meantime,” the Israeli official was quoted as saying by the Hebrew-language website.

A separate senior Israeli official was quoted by Ynet as saying that “patience is needed. There is potential, but we are not there yet”.

A senior Hamas official meanwhile told AFP that “we cannot speak of concrete progress so far”, with disagreement centred on the pace of displaced Palestinians returning to Gaza City in the north.

Smell of death

Netanyahu also faced pushback from one of the far-right allies he needs to maintain a parliamentary majority and stay in power, national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Ben Gvir warned on X, formerly Twitter, that “if the prime minister decides to end the war without an extensive attack on Rafah in order to defeat Hamas, he will not have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister”.

Thousands of protesters gathered on Sunday in front of Israel’s parliament to demand the return of the captives.

“Stay strong, you who are still there,” cried 17-year-old former hostage Agam Goldstein with tears in her eyes.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,207 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

A siege has deprived Gazans of most water, food and other basic supplies — the dire shortages only eased by aid trucks and, in recent weeks, airdropped relief supplies.

Vast areas of Gaza have been turned into a rubble-strewn wasteland, with damage to infrastructure, mostly housing, estimated at $18.5 billion, a World Bank report said.

On Sunday, after Israeli forces left Khan Yunis, displaced Palestinians streamed back there, stunned by the level of destruction.

“We don’t have a city anymore — only rubble,” said Maha Thaer, a mother of four, as she walked among the charred ruins.

“There is absolutely nothing left. I could not stop myself crying as I walked through the streets,” said the 38-year-old, whose home was partially destroyed.

“All the streets have been bulldozed. And the smell... I watched people digging and bringing out the bodies.”

Thaer said she would nonetheless move back into her badly damaged apartment because although “it is not suitable for living... it is better than a tent”.

‘Any scenario’

As the war in Gaza has raged on, the wider Middle East has seen a surge of violence involving Iran-backed militant groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Israel was widely blamed for a strike early last week on the consulate building in Syria of its arch foe Iran, sparking threats or retaliation from Tehran.

An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei warned Sunday that Israeli embassies were “no longer safe” after the strike in Syria that killed seven Revolutionary Guards members.

Gallant said Israel was ready after the army had “finished all its preparations to react to any scenario that could arise regarding Iran”.

The Israeli forces also said it had reached “another phase” of preparation on its northern border with Lebanon, where it has traded fire with Iran-backed Hizbollah for months.

The Israeli military said Monday it had killed a Hizbollah commander, Ali Ahmed Hussein of the elite Radwan Forces, in an overnight air strike in the area of Sultaniyeh in southern Lebanon.

United Nations officials said that six months of violence on the Israel-Lebanon border “must stop”, urging de-escalation “while there is still space for diplomacy”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli forces on Sunday said it had reached “another phase” of preparation for war on its northern border with Lebanon, where it has spent months exchanging fire with Iran-backed Hizbollah.

Hizbollah generally targets Israeli positions close to the border, and says it is doing so in support of Hamas fighters who have been at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip since Hamas suddenly attacked Israel on October 7.

Israel has increasingly carried out deeper strikes into Lebanese territory and has also targeted commanders from Lebanon’s Hizbollah group.

It has also stepped up strikes against Hizbollah and other Iran-linked targets in Syria, including an air strike on April 1 against Iran’s embassy consular section in Damascus, in what analysts fear could spiral into all-out war.

On Sunday the Israeli army said “another phase of the Northern Command’s readiness for war” on the Lebanon front has been completed.

In a statement on its website, the military said commanders “are prepared to summon and equip all the required soldiers in just a few hours... to the front line for defensive and offensive missions”.

The statement came after the military said its fighter jets struck a compound of Hizbollah’s elite Radwan Forces “in the area of Khiam”, several kilometres  north of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as well as a command centre near Toura, northeast of the coastal city of Tyre.

Israel had earlier said it hit targets in Kawkaba, near Khiam, and Meiss El Jabal in southern Lebanon in response to rockets fired towards the Golan Heights.

Emmanuel Navon, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University, told AFP it is “unlikely a war in the north can be avoided”.

But Israeli security expert Omer Dostri said a land war would not likely happen until the fighting on the ground in Gaza is over.

Hizbollah and Israel last went to war in 2006.

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech on Friday that his movement had not yet used its “main” weapons, and reiterated that Hizbollah would cease its attacks only when the war in Gaza ends.

Also on Sunday a source close to Hizbollah told an AFP correspondent in eastern Lebanon’s Baalbek region that other strikes targeted Janta and Sifri in the Bekaa Valley, around 80 kilometres from the closest Israeli frontier.

The Israeli military said on Telegram that fighter jets struck “a military complex” and three other infrastructure sites “belonging to Hizbollah’s air defense network” in the region, after an army drone was shot down.

Iranian leaders have vowed retaliation for the embassy strike which killed seven of its Revolutionary Guards.

On Sunday Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the army had “finished all its preparations to react to any scenario that could arise regarding Iran”.

GENEVA — The World Health Organisation said on Saturday that Gaza's largest hospital had been reduced to ashes by Israel's latest siege, leaving an "empty shell" with many bodies.

WHO staff who gained access on Friday to the devastated facility described horrifying scenes of bodies only partially buried, with their limbs sticking out, and the stench of decomposing corpses.

Israeli forces pulled out of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Monday after a two-week military operation, during which it said it had battled Palestinian "militants" inside what was once the Palestinian territory's most important medical complex.

A WHO-led mission finally accessed the hospital on Friday, after multiple failed attempts since March 25, the United Nations health agency said.

It found massive destruction and heard reports that patients had been "held in abysmal conditions" during the siege and several had died.

"WHO and partners managed to reach Al-Shifa — once the backbone of the health system in Gaza, which is now an empty shell with human graves after the latest siege," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

In a statement, WHO said no patients remained in the hospital, where "numerous shallow graves" had been dug just outside the emergency department and the administrative and surgical buildings.

"Many dead bodies were partially buried with their limbs visible," it said.

 'Decomposing bodies' 

During their visit, WHO staff witnessed "at least five bodies lying partially covered on the ground, exposed to the heat", it said.

"The team reported a pungent smell of decomposing bodies engulfing the hospital compound."

"Safeguarding dignity, even in death, is an indispensable act of humanity," the WHO stressed.

The mission, which was conducted in cooperation with other UN agencies and the acting hospital director, found that "the scale of devastation has left the facility completely non-functional".

"Most of the buildings in the hospital complex are extensively destroyed and the majority of assets damaged or reduced to ashes," Tedros said.

“Even restoring minimal functionality in the short term seems implausible.”

WHO said the acting hospital director had described how patients were “held in abysmal conditions during the siege”.

“They endured severe lack of food, water, healthcare, hygiene and sanitation, and were forced to relocate between buildings at gun point,” it said.

At least 20 patients reportedly died, it said, “due to the lack of access to care and limited movement authorised for health personnel”.

Tedros said efforts by WHO and other aid groups to revive basic services at Al Shifa after Israel’s first devastating raid on the hospital last year “are now lost”.

“People are once again deprived of access to life-saving health care services,” he continued.

Of Gaza’s 36 main hospitals, only 10 remain even partially functional, according to the WHO.

For the past six months, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the besieged, densely populated Palestinian territory, killing at least 33,137 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Tedros said urgent action was needed in Gaza as “famine looms, disease outbreaks spread and trauma injuries increase” among the trapped Palestinian population.

He called for the “protection of remaining health facilities in Gaza... unimpeded access of humanitarian aid into and across the Gaza Strip” and a “ceasefire”.

He also called for a “functional deconfliction mechanism”, referring to the process of clearing aid missions in advance with the Israeli military to ensure they can go ahead safely and unhindered.

“Despite deconfliction, yesterday’s mission faced significant delays at the military checkpoint en route to Al-Shifa hospital,” the WHO pointed out.

It said that “between mid-October and the end of March, over half of all WHO missions had been denied, delayed, impeded or postponed” by the Israelis.

“As health needs soar, the lack of a functional deconfliction system is a major obstacle in delivering humanitarian aid — including medical supplies, fuel, food and water to hospitals — anywhere close to the scale needed,” it said.

TEHRAN — Thousands of people chanted against Israel and the United States at Friday's funeral for seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals, who were killed in an air strike in Syria, which Iran blamed on Israel.

Guards chief General Hossein Salami warned that Israel "cannot escape the consequences" of Monday's strike, which levelled the five-storey consular annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus.

Israel has not commented on the strike, but analysts saw it as an escalation of its campaign against Iran and its regional proxies that runs the risk of triggering a wider war beyond the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

Friday's ceremony coincided with annual Quds (Jerusalem) Day commemorations, when Iran and its allies organise marches in support of the Palestinians.

Quds Day rallies also took place in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain while in Lebanon the head of the Iran-backed Hizbollah movement delivered a speech.

Iran has said among the dead were two brigadier generals from the Guards’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi and Mohammad Reza Zahedi.

A Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Zahedi, 63, was the Quds Force commander for the Palestinian Territories, Syria and Lebanon.

He had held several commands during a career spanning more than 40 years, and was the top Iranian soldier killed since a United States missile strike at Baghdad airport in 2020 killed General Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force.

The coffins of the seven were placed on the trailers of two trucks in one of the largest squares in Tehran.

Israel ‘will be punished’ 

Mourners held Iranian, Palestinian flags and Hizbollah flags, chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”

Ziyad Al Nakhalah, leader of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad which fights alongside Hamas in Gaza, attended the funeral, Iran’s Fars news agency reported. President Ebrahim Raisi and his predecessor Hassan Rouhani were also present.

Guards chief Salami said Tehran was determined to make Israel pay for the raid. “The Zionist regime cannot escape the consequences of the harm it does,” he said, adding: “It is exposed and knows very well what is going to happen.”

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Israel “will be punished” for the killings.

Israel said on Thursday it was strengthening its defences and pausing leave for combat units following Iran’s threats to retaliate.

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Iran would inevitably retaliate.

“Be certain that Iran’s response to the targeting of its Damascus consulate is inevitable,” he said in a televised Quds Day speech.

Nasrallah warned that Hizbollah, which is believed to have a large arsenal of missiles and rockets, had yet to deploy its “main” weapons in its near daily cross-border exchanges with the Israeli army.

“We have not employed our main weapons yet, nor have we used our main forces,” he said.

Hizbollah said Friday that three of its fighters had been killed in exchanges with Israel. Its ally Amal said it had also lost three fighters to an air strike in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army said in a communique that it had bombed a “military complex” used by Amal and targeted several regions of southern Lebanon.

A military spokesman posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Israel’s air force had struck Hezbollah infrastructure.

Israel has long fought a shadow war of assassinations and sabotage against Iran and its allies, including Hizbollah, carrying out hundreds of strikes against targets in Syria.

Guards chief Salami said Israel was entirely dependent on US backing.

“The Zionist regime is alive and well today because of artificial support from the United States. When this is withdrawn it will collapse, and this is near,” he said.

Quds Day solidarity rallies with the Palestinians were held across the region, AFP correspondents reported.

Hundreds marched in Yarmuk refugee camp in Damascus, including members of Islamic Jihad, many chanting “Jerusalem we are coming”.

In Baghdad, pro-Iran groups organised a rally that drew around 2,000 people who gathered on Palestine Street chanting: “No to America, No to Israel.”

An Israeli flag was painted on the ground so that protesters could trample it.