(JTA) — On Thursday, 240 members of India’s Bnei Menashe community arrived in Israel, marking the latest convoy of immigrants brought as part of a government-backed effort to relocate the entire community.

The flight, which landed at Ben Gurion Airport, was welcomed by a delegation including Israel’s aliyah minister and the chairman of The Jewish Agency for Israel. It was the first of three flights expected over the next two weeks that will bring roughly 600 members of the Bnei Menashe community.

Under the operation, titled “Wings of Dawn,” the government expects to bring 1,200 members currently living in the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur to Israel by the end of 2026, and 4,800 more — the rest of the community — by 2030.

“Members of the Bnei Menashe community bring with them unconditional love for the State of Israel, and through family reunification, the heart of Israeli society as a whole is expanded,” Doron Almog, the chairman of The Jewish Agency, said in a statement. “Our responsibility is not only to receive, but to accompany, embrace, and create for them a foundation of opportunity, belonging, and future.”

The Bnei Menashe, based in India, identify as descendants of the “lost tribe” of Menasseh, a claim that has earned backing in Israel but has been disputed by researchers. They began immigrating to Israel in the late 1980s with the help of an Israeli rabbi, undergoing formal conversions to Judaism upon arrival. A different organization took over their immigration process two decades ago but drew criticism from both the right — because the Bnei Menashe’s status as Jews was uncertain — and the left, who accused the government of bringing the them to stoke settlement in the West Bank.

A total of 4,000 members of the community have immigrated to Israel under previous government plans, with the most recent arrivals arriving in 2020.

Among those on the first flight in the new wave were young families, who will be brought to absorption centers in Nof HaGalil, a city in northern Israel, and reunited with family members who previously moved to the country.

Many of those family members join the Israeli army and work in fields where the country has a labor shortage. The reinvigoration of the immigration effort comes as labor shortages have been exacerbated by post-Oct. 7 limits on Palestinian labor, increasing Israel’s reliance on imported workers.

Back in India, the region where the Bnei Menashe live, Mizoram, experienced spasms of ethnic violence in recent years, causing some members of the group to become displaced and its synagogues damaged. But until relatively recently, many harbored little expectation that Israel would hasten to open its doors.

Then, in November, the Israeli government approved a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring all remaining Bnei Menashe community members in India to Israel by 2030. Lawmakers said they aimed to reunite families and repopulate Israel’s north, which had been devastated by years of rocket fire from Lebanon.

The latest operation was supported by a host of Jewish and Christian Zionist groups, including the World Zionist Organization, The Jewish Federations of North America, Christians for Israel and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

“We are making history as we bring the entire Bnei Menashe community to Israel,” Ofir Sofer, the Israeli minister of aliyah and integration, said in a statement. “Today we welcomed the first flight of olim from northern India with great joy and excitement. I thank Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Smotrich, who embraced the initiative I led — an initiative that will unite the entire community in the State of Israel.”

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Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) react after a swap, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, at an unknown location in Ukraine, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov

Ukraine and Russia conducted a prisoner of war swap on Friday, sending back 193 captured personnel each in an exchange both sides said was facilitated by the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

“It is important that there are exchanges and that our people are returning home,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a post on Telegram.

His chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, and Russia‘s defence ministry said the US and the UAE had assisted with the exchange.

Russia and Ukraine have conducted many prisoner swaps over four years of war, exchanging thousands of captives in total.

Zelenskiy said some of the returned captives, who included soldiers, border guards, and police, had injuries, while others had faced criminal charges in Russia.

In Ukraine, returning captives streamed off buses, many draped in their country’s flag and overwhelmed with emotion.

“It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m home, I was in captivity for three years … our Ukrainian sky, our trees — this is happiness,” said Serhiy, a soldier, who gave only his first name.

Residents gather in a street after Friday prayers to celebrate the arrest of Amjad Yousef, a key suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, in Tadamon, Syria, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Friday it had arrested the main suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, one of the worst acts of violence attributed to the former government of Bashar al-Assad, in which 288 civilians were killed.

The ministry released footage of Amjad Yousef’s arrest in the Al-Ghab Plain area of Hama province in western Syria, near his hometown. Yousef had been hiding there since the overthrow of Assad at the end of 2024, a security source told Reuters.

US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack welcomed the arrest in a post on X, calling it an important step towards accountability for atrocities committed during Syria’s war.

DOCUMENTING THE MASSACRE

Yousef, 40, a former member of military intelligence under Assad, was thrust into the spotlight in April 2022 when the UK’s Guardian newspaper published videos provided by two academics that they said showed him forcing blindfolded civilians to run towards a pit in the Tadamon neighborhood of southern Damascus before shooting them.

Annsar Shahoud, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Holocaust and Genocide Center and one of the academics, spent four years documenting the massacre.

Posing as an online fangirl, Shahoud gained Yousef’s trust and ultimately obtained his confessions both on video and audio recording.

Reuters was unable to reach Yousef for comment as he has been taken into custody.

The massacre is one of the most egregious documented incidents of violence attributed to the Assad government during the 14-year bloody war that began in 2011.

After Assad’s fall at the end of 2024, civilians, media outlets and international organizations went to the site of the massacre to inspect it and interview witnesses. Locals refer to the site as “Amjad Yousef’s Pit.” It has been marked on Google Maps as “The Site of the Tadamon Massacre.”

Ahmed Adra, a Tadamon resident and a member of the neighborhood committee, said victims’ families had been celebrating in the streets since morning.

“We will take white roses and plant them at the site of the massacre and tell the victims that their memory is alive and that justice is being served,” he told Reuters.

Shahoud said she now felt safe with Yousef in custody, but added the path to justice in Syria was unclear and did not include all perpetrators.

“I feel safe now, despite the distance, because I always felt for years that this person was after me,” she told Reuters.