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‘We Thought They Would Lynch Us’: Freed Hostage Says Mobs Threw Stones at Red Cross Vehicles Leaving Gaza
i24 News – The first group of Israeli hostages, released from Hamas captivity on Friday, said Gazan mobs hurled stones at the Red Cross vehicles carrying them to the border crossing.
WATCH: Israel releases the first official video from the release of the first group of hostages on Friday night as they arrived at the Hatzor airbase in Israel
Omer Miron/GPO pic.twitter.com/FZx9IkJQH7
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) November 25, 2023
“Until the very last moment we weren’t sure we would make it, we thought they would lynch us en route to Israel,” an unnamed freed hostage was cited in Israeli media as saying.
The Red Cross group was tasked with handing over the hostages from Palestinian terrorists to the Israeli military personnel awaiting them at the Egyptian border. The group was on the receiving end of probing question from Israeli officials and media following its performance during the hostage crisis.
‘I don’t understand why anyone from the Red Cross doesn’t say “How dare Hamas not tell us where and in what condition Israeli hostages are?” It’s a very simple demand!’
A testy back-and-forth between @albertlewitinn and an ICRC spokesperson about the group’s functioning in Gaza pic.twitter.com/QTx3htq7iP
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) November 24, 2023
After releasing two groups of hostages on Friday as part of a Qatari-brokered deal with Israel, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is still holding on to some 200 others. They were seized on October 7 in what was the deadliest outburst of antisemitic violence since the Holocaust.
The post ‘We Thought They Would Lynch Us’: Freed Hostage Says Mobs Threw Stones at Red Cross Vehicles Leaving Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Kurdish-led SDF Say Five Members Killed During Attack by Islamic State in Syria
Islamic State slogans painted along the walls of the tunnel was used by Islamic State militants as an underground training camp in the hillside overlooking Mosul, Iraq, March 4, 2017. Photo: via Reuters Connect.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Sunday that five of its members had been killed during an attack by Islamic State militants on a checkpoint in eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zor on July 31.
The SDF was the main fighting force allied to the United States in Syria during fighting that defeated Islamic State in 2019 after the group declared a caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq.
The Islamic State has been trying to stage a comeback in the Middle East, the West and Asia. Deir el-Zor city was captured by Islamic State in 2014, but the Syrian army retook it in 2017.
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Armed Groups Attack Security Force Personnel in Syria’s Sweida, Killing One, State TV Reports
People ride a motorcycle past a burned-out military vehicle, following deadly clashes between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes, and government forces, in Syria’s predominantly Druze city of Sweida, Syria, July 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Armed groups attacked personnel from Syria’s internal security forces in Sweida, killing one member and wounding others, and fired shells at several villages in the violence-hit southern province, state-run Ekhbariya TV reported on Sunday.
The report cited a security source as saying the armed groups had violated the ceasefire agreed in the predominantly Druze region, where factional bloodshed killed hundreds of people last month.
Violence in Sweida erupted on July 13 between tribal fighters and Druze factions. Government forces were sent to quell the fighting, but the bloodshed worsened, and Israel carried out strikes on Syrian troops in the name of the Druze.
The Druze are a minority offshoot of Islam with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Sweida province is predominantly Druze but is also home to Sunni tribes, and the communities have had long-standing tensions over land and other resources.
A US-brokered truce ended the fighting, which had raged in Sweida city and surrounding towns for nearly a week. Syria said it would investigate the clashes, setting up a committee to investigate the attacks.
The Sweida bloodshed last month was a major test for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, after a wave of sectarian violence in March that killed hundreds of Alawite citizens in the coastal region.
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Netanyahu Urges Red Cross to Aid Gaza Hostages
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference, in Jerusalem, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Pool
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he spoke with the International Red Cross’s regional head, Julien Lerisson, and requested his involvement in providing food and medical care to hostages held in Gaza.