Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan speaks during a press conference following the inaugural meeting of the Balkans Peace Platform, a Turkish-led initiative aimed at fostering dialogue and cooperation across the Western Balkans, in Istanbul, Turkey, July 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Murad Seze

i24 News – Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with Hamas chief Khalil al-Khayya and other senior members of the jihadist group’s political bureau in Istanbul on Saturday.

Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas negotiator, was among the terror chiefs surviving an Israeli strike on their Doha residence last month. Topics of discussion, according to the Turkish foreign ministry, included the state of the ceasefire and the flow of humanitarian aid.

The meeting comes ahead of Monday’s Istanbul gathering of the foreign ministers of the so-called “guarantor countries” as stipulated in the ceasefire plan put forth by the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump. The countries include Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile Israel determined that partial remains of three deceased individuals handed over to Israel by Hamas in Gaza overnight were not those of any of the hostages held in the war-ravaged enclave.

The bodies of 11 hostages are thought to still be in Gaza. Hamas has released 20 living hostages and handed over the remains of 17 others since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on October 10, bringing to a halt the two-year war sparked by the October 7, 2023 massacre.

The U.S.-brokered truce, which left thorny issues like the disarmament of Hamas unresolved, has seen the jihadist group reassert its control over parts of Gaza by brutal reprisals against Palestinians perceived to be hostile to its rule. The outbreaks of violence by Hamas against both Gazans and Israeli forces have tested the fragile truce.

FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

Syrian President Ahmed Sharaa will visit Washington, US Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said on Saturday, in what would be the first visit by a Syrian head of state to the US capital.

During the visit, Syria would “hopefully” join the US-led coalition to defeat Islamic State, Barrack told reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, an annual global security and geopolitical conference.

A Syrian source familiar with the matter said the visit was expected to take place within the next two weeks.

According to the US State Department’s historical list of foreign leader visits, no previous Syrian president has paid an official visit to Washington. Sharaa addressed the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

Since seizing power from Bashar al-Assad last December, Sharaa has made a series of foreign trips as his transitional government seeks to re-establish Syria’s ties with world powers that had shunned Damascus during Assad’s rule.

Barrack said Washington was aiming to recruit Syria to join the coalition Washington has led since 2014 to fight against Islamic State, the terrorist group that controlled around a third of Syria and Iraq at its peak between 2014 and 2017.

“We are trying to get everybody to be a partner in this alliance, which is huge for them,” Barrack said.

Sharaa once led Syria’s offshoot of Al Qaeda, but a decade ago his anti-Assad rebel group broke away from the network founded by Osama bin Laden, and later clashed with Islamic State.

The US-led coalition and its local partners drove Islamic State from its last stronghold in Syria in 2019. The group has been attempting to exploit the fall of the Assad regime to stage a comeback in Syria and neighboring Iraq, sources told Reuters in June.

SYRIA-ISRAEL DE-ESCALATION TALKS

Barrack earlier told the summit that Syria and Israel continued to hold de-escalation talks, which the US has been mediating. He told reporters that Syria and Israel were close to reaching an agreement but declined to say when exactly a deal could be reached.

Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.

The Syrian source said the US is pushing for a security agreement to be agreed with Israel by the time Sharaa visits Washington.

Israel and Syria have been Middle East adversaries for decades. Despite the overthrow of Assad last December, territorial disputes and deep-seated political mistrust between the two countries remain.

Hamas terrorists commandeering and looting an aid track in Gaza. Photo: From social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law. Via i24

i24 News – The US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) on Saturday published a video showing Hamas operatives commandeering and looting an aid truck that traveled as part of a humanitarian convoy delivering needed assistance from international partners to Gazans in northern Khan Younis.

The coordination center was alerted through video surveillance from a U.S. MQ-9 aerial drone flying overhead to monitor implementation of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, the statement said.

Operatives attacked the driver and stole the aid and truck after moving the driver to the road’s median. The driver’s status is unknown.

The CNCC is a coordination hub, established in southern Israel near the Gaza border to facilitate humanitarian, logistical, and security efforts, monitor the ceasefire agreement, and promote stabilization.

“Over the past week, international partners have delivered more than 600 trucks of commercial goods and aid into Gaza daily,” the statement read. “This incident undermines these efforts. Nearly 40 nations and international organizations represented at the CMCC are working together to help flow humanitarian, logistical and security assistance into Gaza.”