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Gaza toll tops 1,000 amid 12-hour truce
Jihadists take over Syria army base: NGO
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Russia flays EU sanctions, raps America over Ukraine role
Qaida releases video of US suicide bomber in Syria
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Gaza toll tops 1,000 amid 12-hour truce
Gaza/Jerusalem, July 26 With the temporary ceasefire on, Palestinians frantically scoured through the rubble with medics saying over 100 bodies had been retrieved across the Gaza Strip. The discovery of the bodies under mounds of rubble had pushed the death toll to over 1,000 Palestinians killed in the coastal enclave since the conflict began on July 8. Three Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip in the early hours of today before the humanitarian truce started, the army said. The new deaths raised the losses on the side of the Israeli military to 40, along with two Israeli civilians and one Thai worker killed on the Israeli side during 19 days of conflict. Israel said it would continue to "locate and neutralise" Hamas tunnels during the pause, which began at 0800 local time. So far 31 tunnels have been discovered, with about half destroyed, Israel's military said. Before the truce began, Israeli strikes killed at least 19 Palestinians overnight at a family home near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Images showed relatives weeping as the bodies of five children were taken to a local morgue. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed overnight, Israel's military confirmed. The Iron Dome defence system intercepted three rockets fired towards the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon overnight. The truce came as international efforts to negotiate a longer seven-day ceasefire continued with foreign ministers from the US, UK, Turkey and Qatar meeting in Paris today to try to negotiate a long-term truce. "We all call on parties to extend the humanitarian ceasefire currently in force, by 24 hours that could be renewed," France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters after the meeting, which lasted more than two hours. "We all want to obtain a lasting ceasefire as quickly as possible that addresses both Israeli requirements in terms of security and Palestinian requirements in terms of socio-economic development," said Fabius. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Fabius met with their counterparts from Britain, Germany, Italy, Qatar and Turkey, as well as a representative from the European Union. As the truce took effect, Palestinians returned to areas where heavy Israeli bombardment had taken place to look for bodies and also started to stock up food supplies. The scene was gruesome with buildings completely pulverised, cars thrown 50 metres into the air on top of buildings and the facades of some block of flats completely ripped off.
— PTI
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Jihadists take over Syria army base: NGO
Damascus, July 26 In a two-day assault on the base in Raqa province, an IS bastion, the jihadists killed at least 85 soldiers, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. More than 50 troops were summarily executed, 19 others were killed in a double suicide bombing and at least 16 more died in the assault launched on Thursday. Hundreds of troops "withdrew on Friday to safe places-either to nearby villages whose residents oppose IS or to nearby Brigade 93 -- but the fate of some 200 remains unknown," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. "Some of the executed troops were beheaded, and their bodies and severed heads put on display in Raqa city," an IS stronghold, he told AFP. Video shot by jihadists and distributed on YouTube showed IS fighters apparently inside Division 17 living quarters burning a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
— AFP
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Russia flays EU sanctions, raps America over
Moscow, July 26 Russia's Foreign Ministry also accused the United States, which has already imposed its own sanctions against Moscow, of contributing to the conflict in Ukraine through its support for the pro-Western government in Kiev. The 28-nation EU reached an outline agreement on Friday to impose the first economic sanctions on Russia over its behaviour in Ukraine but scaled back their scope to exclude technology for the crucial gas sector. The EU also imposed travel bans and asset freezes on the chiefs of Russia's FSB security service and foreign intelligence service and a number of other top Russian officials, saying they had helped shape Russian government policy that threatened Ukraine's sovereignty. The EU had already imposed asset freezes and travel bans on dozens of Russian officials over Russia's annexation in March of Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and its support for separatists battling Kiev's forces in eastern Ukraine.
— Reuters
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Qaida releases video of US suicide bomber in Syria
Beirut, July 26 "I want to rest in the afterlife, not in this world... My heart is not at peace here. Hopefully it will be in heaven," Abu Hurayra says in broken Arabic in the 17-minute video posted on YouTube yesterday by Al-Nusra Front. The American jihadist carried out a May 25 truck bomb attack on an army base in Jabal al-Arbaeen. Six days, the State Department confirmed that the US citizen had carried out a suicide attack.
— AFP
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Hamas on a UN request to pull out bodies from mounds of rubble and metal of bombed homes, as the Palestinian death toll in the conflict rose to over 1,000 with mostly civilian casualties.
Islamic State fighters have seized a Syrian army base in the northern province of Raqa, killing scores of troops and beheading some of them, a monitoring group said today.
