Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 20 Nigerian soldiers, including a commanding officer, during a brazen assault on an army base in northeastern Borno state, security sources and residents reported on Sunday. The attack, carried out by members of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), targeted the Nigerian Army’s 149 Battalion in Malam-Fatori, a remote town near the border with Niger.

According to survivors, the militants arrived in gun trucks on Friday and launched a surprise attack, overwhelming the troops after more than three hours of intense fighting. "They rained bullets everywhere," said one soldier who survived the assault. "We tried to repel the attack, but they overpowered us, killing our commanding officer, a lieutenant colonel." The soldier, who requested anonymity, confirmed that 20 soldiers died and several others were injured.

Residents reported that the militants remained in the town as late as Saturday night, burning buildings and forcing civilians to flee. Malakaka Bukar, a local militia member assisting the army, said the insurgents also preached to some residents before retreating.

Boko Haram and ISWAP, both active in Borno state, have intensified attacks in the region since the beginning of the year, targeting security forces and civilians alike. Despite being weakened by military operations and internal conflicts, the groups continue to pose a significant threat, displacing thousands and causing widespread devastation.

Trump says Jordan, Egypt should take in Palestinians from Gaza; Egypt and Jordan push back

U.S. President Donald Trump said Jordan and Egypt should take in Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza, a suggestion rejected by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs the enclave, and apparently rebuffed by Jordan and Egypt.

Asked if this was a temporary or long-term solution for Gaza, where Israel's military assault has caused a dire humanitarian situation and killed tens of thousands, Trump said on Saturday: "Could be either."

Jordan is already home to several million Palestinians, while tens of thousands live in Egypt. Both countries and other Arab nations reject the idea of Palestinians in Gaza being moved to their countries. Gaza is land that Palestinians would want as part of a future Palestinian state.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has repeatedly called for the return of Jewish settlers to Gaza, welcomed Trump's call as "an excellent idea" and said he would work to develop a plan to implement it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected such notions, advocated by Smotrich.

A Hamas official echoed long-standing Palestinian fears about being driven permanently from their homes.

Palestinians "will not accept any offers or solutions, even if (such offers) appear to have good intentions under the guise of reconstruction, as announced in the proposals of U.S. President Trump," Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told Reuters.

Another Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, urged Trump not to repeat "failed" ideas tried by his predecessor Joe Biden.

"The people of Gaza have endured death and refused to leave their homeland and they will not leave it regardless of any other reasons," Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

Jordan also appeared to reject Trump's suggestion, with its Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi telling reporters that the country's stance against any displacement of Palestinians from Gaza remains "firm and unwavering".

Egypt's foreign ministry followed suit, saying it categorically rejects any displacement of Palestinians from their land, be it "short term or long term".

Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Trump's remarks. "Our people will remain steadfast and will not leave their homeland," said a statement published by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Palestinian analyst Ghassan al-Khatib said Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Jordanians and Egyptians, would reject Trump's plan: "I don't think that there is a place in reality for such an idea."

'IT'S A REAL MESS'

Referring to a call he had on Saturday with Jordan's King Abdullah, Trump told reporters: "I said to him I'd love you to take on more because I'm looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it's a real mess. I'd like him to take people."

He added, "I'd like Egypt to take people," and said he would speak to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.

"You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing," Trump said.

The population in the Palestinian enclave prior to the start of the Israel-Gaza war was around 2.3 million.

Washington had said last year it opposed the forcible displacement of Palestinians. Rights groups and humanitarian agencies have for months raised concerns over the situation in Gaza, with the war displacing nearly the entire population and leading to a hunger crisis.

Washington has also faced criticism for backing Israel but has maintained support for its ally, saying it is helping Israel defend itself against Iranian-backed militant groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

"It's literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change," Trump said on Saturday.

'NEW AND BETTER LIVES'

Smotrich, who said only "out-of-the-box thinking" could achieve peace, said Trump's plan would give Palestinians "the opportunity to build new and better lives elsewhere".

"With God's help, I will work with the prime minister and cabinet to develop an operational plan to implement this as soon as possible," he said.

In a post on X, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said: "Ethnic cleansing is anything but an 'out-of-the-box' thinking, no matter how one packages it. It is illegal, immoral and irresponsible."

Most of Gaza's population has been internally displaced by the war. On Sunday, many of them rejected Trump's suggestion.

"If he thinks he will forcibly displace the Palestinian people (then) this is impossible, impossible, impossible. The Palestinian people firmly believe that this land is theirs, this soil is their soil," said Magdy Seidam.

"No matter how much Israel tries to destroy, break, and to show people that it had won, in reality it did not win."

The current Gaza conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed more than 47,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. The fighting has currently paused amid a fragile ceasefire.

Reuters

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Zelensky explains ban on talks with Moscow

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has explained that he banned negotiations with Russia in order to prevent what he called “separatist” talks outside official government oversight. Russia tried to reach out to Kiev through various intermediaries, including Ukrainian lawmakers, European parliamentarians, US contacts, and even ordinary people, he claimed in comments to journalists on Saturday.

Speaking at a press conference with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, Zelensky complained that Moscow started “setting up a large number of various channels” it could use for talks after the start of its military campaign against Kiev in February 2022.

“There were a lot of negotiation processes, many shadowy political corridors,” he added.

“There were many various negotiation venues. I just realized that we and our relevant authorities cannot control it,” he told journalists, adding that he “quickly stopped” it, calling any talks with Moscow outside of his government’s control “separatism.” He also admitted that Russia did have “a large number” of negotiation channels in Ukraine prior to the ban.

Zelensky signed a decree banning any talks with Russia on October 4, 2022. The document only stated that any negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin were “impossible.” It did not specify whether Zelensky or anyone else could still speak with the Russian leadership.

Russia has consistently stated its readiness for peace talks and has accused Kiev of avoiding seeking a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing conflict.

Earlier this week, Putin told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin that any negotiations between Moscow and Kiev would be “illegitimate” as long as the ban stays in place. Any results of such talks could easily be made null and void, the Russian president warned, adding that, although some preliminary contacts could be made right now, any “serious” steps are not possible until the situation changes.

Putin also called on Kiev’s Western backers to exert pressure on Ukraine and make it lift the prohibition on talks. The Russian president said he believed Kiev was in no rush to lift the ban since it was satisfied with the current situation that allowed it to receive “hundreds of billions [of dollars] from its sponsors” that it can “chomp down on.”

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Zelenskiy again replaces commander of Ukraine's key eastern front

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday replaced for the third time in under a year the commander of a key Ukrainian military formation responsible for defending the eastern hub of Pokrovsk that's under increased risk of falling to Russian forces.

Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, said he put Ukraine's new commander of ground forces, Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, in charge of the Khortytsia operational-strategic group, whose area of responsibility includes much of Ukraine's eastern front.

"These are the toughest areas of fighting," Zelenskiy said, adding that he had discussed the changes at meeting with Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Russia's capture of the city would bring it closer to seizing the entire Donetsk region, which has been one of President Vladimir Putin's key goals in his war in Ukraine.

Zelensky added that Drapatyi's appointment will help to combine the combat work of the army with the proper training of brigades.

"It is the front-line needs that should determine the standards for staffing and training of brigades," he said.

Drapatyi will replace Major General Andriy Hnatov, who has been in charge of Khortytsia since June and who will become a Deputy Chief of the General Staff to run training and communication.

Russian forces have been steadily advancing in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region towards Pokrovsk, bypassing it from the south and trying to cut off supply routes to Ukraine's troops.

Pokrovsk, which had a pre-war population of around 60,000, has been one of Ukraine's main defensive strongholds in the Donetsk region and the focus of fierce fighting for months.

RT/Reuters

Depending on what view one takes of the matter, 10 February promises to be Proxy Wars Day at the Supreme Court of Nigeria in Abuja. On that day, a panel of five Justices of the Supreme Court will take arguments on seven appeals connected with the synthetic political crisis in Rivers State.

The issues that the court will be asked to decide include the validity of last October’s local government elections in the state; the fate of the faction in the Rivers State House of Assembly, who claim to have switched their affiliation from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP, on whose platform they were elected) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); the legality of the state’s 2025 budget passed by the rump of the state House of Assembly; and the effort to importune judges into denying Rivers State access to its share of the Federation Account.

The effort to frame these as legal issues is transparently valiant. Despite the shameful conversion of judges into politicians in the Rivers State crisis – or indeed because of precisely that fact – the imminence of Rivers State Proxy Wars Day at the Supreme Court is evidence of what has gone wrong with Nigeria’s judicial system and why fixing it is essential for the health of Nigeria’s attempt at government with electoral legitimacy.

This is not the first time that legal disputes about power and how to share the spoils from it have ended up at the highest court in the land. That tendency in Nigeria is over a century old and arguably goes back to the 1921 judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the case of Amodu Tijani, over the effort by the colonial authorities to split Herbert Heelas Macaulay from his support for Eshugbayi Eleko, the Oba of Lagos.

For the hearing of that cases before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1920, Macaulay travelled to London with the Oba’s Staff of Office in support of Amodu Tijani and the Idejo Chiefs of Lagos. From London, he issued a statement claiming that the Eleko was the King of over 17 million Nigerians and in possession of a territory more than three times that of Great Britain. Despite a healthy revenue of over £4 million, he claimed, the British had reneged on a treaty commitment to compensate the Eleko.

Embarrassed at being publicly called duplicitous in this way, the British required the Eleko to disown Macaulay. He issued a public statement clarifying his position on Macaulay’s statement but declined to disown him through the Oba’s Bell Ringers, as the Brits required.

Unable to secure the support of the popular Eleko, the colonists chose to head off rising tension by deposing him. On 6 August 1925, they issued an ordinance de-stooling him and, two days later, on 8 August, they arrested and removed the Eleko into internal banishment in Oyo. In his place, they installed Oba Ibikunle Akitoye.

Akitoye’s rule lasted an uncomfortably brief three years, largely because he lacked the support of the people of Lagos. Indeed, in 1926 he suffered physical assault by his people. Supported by the elite and people of Lagos, the deposed Eleko took his case to the courts, fighting all the way once more to the Privy Council, which decided on 19 June 1928 in favour of his claim for leave for a writ of habeas corpus. This all but sealed the fate of Akitoye, who is suspected to have facilitated his own earthly demise shortly thereafter.

The crisis in Rivers State shares some unsettling similarities with the events in Lagos nearly one century ago. In Rivers today, as in Lagos then, a powerful man – in this case the current minister of the Federal Capital Territory and immediate past governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike – seeks to banish the current governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara, from office using surrogates beholden to him in the state House of Assembly.

There is one important difference, though: the issues in Rivers State today hardly involve principle or the public interest. Framed though they are in legalese, these cases from Rivers State are about power and money grab. This is not a first. It appears to be the standard procedure of the current FCT Minister to seek to inveigle judges into acting as his political surrogates under the ruse of law.

In instigating this crisis, Wike suffered a characteristic failure of his frontal lobe and forgot his public vow to “give himself that respect” and not interfere in the affairs of the state after his exit from the office in May 2023. Rather, since leaving office as the state governor, Wike has sought to install himself as both the minister in Abuja and sole administrator in Port Harcourt. He makes no effort to conceal the fact that much of what passes as his political dare-devilry appears to be accomplished under the influence of sufficiently gluttonous amounts of a dangerous beverage as to entitle him to access to a defence of automatism in criminal law.

In October 2024, he told Seun Okinbaloye, with undisguised hubris on Channels Television, that the only solution to the crisis in Rivers State was for the incumbent governor to “obey court judgment.” This was no advocate for the rule of law, however. Instead, Wike projected an air of political impregnability purchased with a currency bearing a distinct whiff of procured judicial crookery.

To be fair, this is not something entirely unexpected of an ambitious Nigerian politician without an alternative address (apologies to Deji Adeyanju). What is more difficult to overlook is the high judicial tolerance for undisguised political importuning of judges.

Nigeria’s judicial system has been overtaken by a category known as “political cases.” In November 2023, former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola, reported that his Supreme Court registered 1,271 motions and appeals from 12 September 2022 to 11 July, 2023, out of this, the court “heard 388 political appeals, 215 criminal appeals and 464 civil appeals.” Two years earlier, in 2021, Ariwoola’s predecessor, Tanko Muhammad, reported that the court’s portfolio of 269 appeals disposed of included 139 civil appeals, 102 criminal appeals, and 28 “political cases”.

According to Ariwoola’s report, the court “delivered a total number of 251 judgments, of which 125 were political appeals, 81 were civil appeals, and 45 were criminal appeals.” In just two years, the output of the court fell by 6.69 per cent but “political cases” rose from 10.67 per cent to 49.8 per cent. Even allowing for the fact that 2023 was an election year, this is system collapse.

Nigeria’s judges appear to have decided that the only people entitled to exit from the courts are politicians. In turn, the politicians are happy to enjoy this exclusivity and to overwhelm the courts to the point that even judges now complain. They hire the priciest lawyers to frame undisguised power and money grabs as questions of law.

The Supreme Court can end this but feigns reluctance to. Rather, the court affords powerful politicians the kind of tolerance that they are unwilling to extend to lesser mortals, preferring instead to enable this joint enterprise of senior lawyers and politicians while fettering its own capacity to determine for itself what should be a question of law deserving of its rarefied attention.

This sucks for many reasons. It prostitutes the bench; casualises the constitutional guarantee of fair trial “within a reasonable time”; and portrays the judiciary as captured.

To describe this as Supreme pusillanimity is to be generous. It is a form of judicial lasciviousness syndrome, promenading judicial wares before political gawkers in a peonage system in which the only effective currency is high political patronage. In these Rivers State cases, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to make a bold statement. If it doesn’t, then it should be ready for many more proxy war days yet.

**Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a professor of law, teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and can be reached through This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Ashton Jackson

Drew Houston’s company was born from a very millennial problem.

As a student at MIT, Houston repeatedly lost USB drives with important information on them, he told “Lenny’s Podcast” in an episode that aired earlier this month. In 2007, at age 24, he got fed up and created a cloud storage platform for his own personal use. Later, he built it out into the file-hosting company Dropbox — which has a $9.62 billion market cap, as of Thursday afternoon.

“I started Dropbox more out of just personal frustration,” said Houston, now 41. “It really felt like something only I was super interested in as far as file syncing, and focusing on one customer, which was myself.”

This wasn’t Houston’s first entrepreneurial foray: He’d launched an SAT prep company called Accolade in 2004. The gig was “ramen profitable, so to speak, but more importantly a great introduction to the wild world of starting companies,” he writes on his LinkedIn profile.

Dropbox’s success, in contrast, gave Houston a net worth of of $2.3 billion, according to Forbes. He remains the company’s CEO today, overseeing more than 700 million users from 180 different countries on the platform.

But Dropbox’s growth didn’t happen overnight.

‘They just totally nuked our business model’

Popularizing cloud storage was a double-edged sword, Houston said: As Dropbox became popular, it increasingly had to survive competition from giants like Apple, Microsoft and Google.

“All of them launched competing products in one form or another,” said Houston. “Steve Jobs was on stage in 2011 announcing iCloud, calling out Dropbox by name as something that will be viewed as archaic. And similarly, we always felt like we were in the shadow of the hammer of Google launching Google Drive.”

Dropbox was relatively large itself by that point, with a reported $4 billion valuation in 2011. Over the next few years, it acquired an email app called Mailbox and launched a photo management app called Carousel.

But new product lines couldn’t solve a bigger problem: By 2015, platforms like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram were providing some of Dropbox’s core file-sharing services for free.

“They just totally nuked our business model ... [It was] even worse because it was so easily anticipated,” Houston said. “So this became a very public and personal embarrassment for me. How could we not have predicted that, or been out in front of that?”

‘All you can control is how you respond’

Houston read business books to help him strategize, including “Playing to Win” by ex-Proctor and Gamble head Alan G. Lafley, he said. His takeaway: Focus on what you can control and do well, instead of what your competitors are doing.

Dropbox shuttered Carousel and Mailbox, cutting an undisclosed amount of staff. It launched Magic Pocket in 2015, an “in-house multi-exabyte storage system” that allowed Dropbox users to handle bigger file uploads and store files at a larger scale — a new competitive edge, said Houston.

The lesson, he said, is to view challenges as opportunities to improve: Without the strong competition, Dropbox might never have pushed itself to grow.

“Every time you move up a league, your reward is a stronger and better opponent and potentially a more unlevel playing field,” said Houston. “That’s just the way it is. You can’t control that. All you can control is how you respond.”

CNBC

Okezie Ogbata, a 36-year-old Nigerian national, has pleaded guilty in a Florida district court to orchestrating a transnational inheritance fraud scheme that defrauded more than 400 elderly and vulnerable Americans of over $6 million. The U.S. Department of Justice revealed that Ogbata and his accomplices sent fraudulent letters posing as representatives of a Spanish bank, falsely claiming that recipients were entitled to multimillion-dollar inheritances from deceased relatives abroad.

The letters instructed victims to send money for purported fees, taxes, and other payments, warning them that failure to comply could lead to government scrutiny. Many of the victims, primarily elderly individuals, were deceived into sending funds under the false pretense of securing their supposed inheritances.

Ogbata entered his guilty plea on January 15, acknowledging his role in the scheme, which specifically preyed on vulnerable populations. “This case highlights the importance of international cooperation in combating transnational crime,” said Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

Ogbata is scheduled to be sentenced on April 14, 2025, by U.S. District Judge Roy Altman. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for his involvement in the fraudulent operation.

The United States has stopped issuing passports with the gender-neutral “X” option, the State Department announced, following an executive order from President Donald Trump that restricts federal recognition of transgender identity. This decision reverses a policy introduced under the previous administration of President Joe Biden, leaving many individuals uncertain about the status of their pending applications and already issued passports.

Shortly after taking office on Monday, Trump signed an executive order mandating that federal agencies only recognize male or female gender markers. This move is part of a broader effort to swiftly overturn policies enacted by his predecessor.

“In accordance with the Executive Order, the Department’s issuance of U.S. passports will now reflect the individual’s biological sex as defined in the directive,” a State Department spokesperson stated on Friday. The spokesperson confirmed that the department “is no longer issuing U.S. passports with X markers” and has “paused processing of all applications requesting a gender marker other than those specified in the Executive Order.”

The spokesperson added that guidance for individuals holding previously issued passports with the X marker will be provided soon, with updates to be posted on the department’s travel website.

The State Department first introduced the X gender marker in October 2021 following a legal battle initiated by an intersex individual from Colorado. By early 2022, the department had begun routinely processing passports with the X designation. While exact figures on the number of X passports issued or requested have not been released, a study by UCLA Law School’s Williams Institute estimated that over 16,000 people would apply for such passports annually.

During his campaign, Trump criticized transgender-related policies, particularly those involving women’s sports and medical care for children.

In a series of separate attacks, suspected bandits have abducted 22 residents from Kugauta and Kitanda, both within Kumana Chiefdom of Kauru Local Government Area, Kaduna State.

A resident and student pastor, Emmanuel Johnson, said the attacks occurred around 10:30 pm on Friday. He explained that the bandits stormed Kitanda, abducting 12 people, mainly women and children, before attacking Kugauta, where 10 more were taken.

Johnson expressed deep frustration over the persistent insecurity in the communities, lamenting that only three policemen were stationed to secure the village and nearby areas.

“Our communities are constantly under attack. People are being kidnapped daily,” he said. “The three police officers here cannot secure us. The government must show that we, too, are Nigerians with equal rights to protection.”

He further revealed that over ₦60 million had been paid in ransom to the abductors, with several residents still in captivity.

Many villagers have been forced to flee their homes due to the relentless attacks, leaving the communities in despair.

The worsening situation, he said, had compounded residents’ struggles with poor infrastructure, including bad roads, lack of hospitals, and inadequate schools.

“We can’t even take our farm produce to the market because the roads are impassable,” Johnson lamented.

He urged the government to deploy more security personnel, establish police stations, and set up army Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) in strategic areas to counter the escalating threat. He also called for offensive operations to dismantle bandit camps in the region.

“These bandits have crippled our economy and pushed us further into poverty. The government must act decisively to end this hardship,” he said.

Efforts to reach the Kaduna State Police Public Relations Officer, Mansir Hassan, for comments were unsuccessful as calls and messages to his phone were not responded to at the time of filing this report.

Daily Trust

Four Israeli soldiers swapped for 200 Palestinians; north Gaza shut over hostage still held

Hamas freed four female Israeli soldiers on Saturday in exchange for 200 Palestinian prisoners, but a delay in freeing another hostage prompted Israel to block hundreds of thousands of Gazans from returning to the enclave's bombed-out north.

The four Israelis freed in the second swap of the week-old Gaza truce were led onto a podium in Gaza City amid a large crowd of Palestinians and surrounded by dozens of armed Hamas men. The hostages waved and smiled before being led off, entering Red Cross vehicles to be transported to Israeli forces.

Soon after, buses carrying released Palestinian prisoners were seen departing from the Israeli Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank. Israel's Prison Service said all 200 had been released.

The releases on either side were greeted by cheering crowds, including Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv and Palestinians assembled in Ramallah.

But the failure of Hamas to release another hostage, a female Israeli civilian, led Israel to announce it was halting plans to let Palestinians return to northern parts of Gaza, the area worst hit in the war.

Hamas, which considers the return of Gazans to their homes to be one of the principal elements of the ceasefire, said it would free the hostage next week, and called the halt to the reopening of the north a violation of the truce.

The truce calls for Hamas to release 33 women, children, elderly, sick and wounded hostages over a six-week first phase, with Israel freeing 30 prisoners for each civilian and 50 for each soldier.

The four Israeli soldiers freed on Saturday - Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag - had all been stationed at an observation post on the edge of Gaza when Hamas fighters overran their base and abducted them during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that precipitated the war.

Their parents clapped and cried out in joy when they saw them on screen, watching the handover live from a nearby military base across the border. In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Israelis gathered at a rallying point now widely referred to as Hostages Square, crying, embracing and cheering as the release was aired on a giant screen.

The women were reunited with their families and then flown aboard helicopters to a hospital in central Israel. Video released by the Israeli military showed them embracing tightly with their parents, in smiles and tears.

The 200 Palestinians freed on Saturday include militants, some serving life sentences for involvement in attacks that killed dozens of people, according to a list published by Hamas.

Israel says those convicted of killing Israelis will not be permitted to return home. Around 70 will be deported to Egypt, Palestinian officials said, and from there to another country, possibly Turkey, Qatar or Algeria.

Another 16 were sent to Gaza and the rest were released to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where cheering crowds waving Palestinian flags gathered in Ramallah to greet them.

DISPUTE

Joy in Israel over Saturday's release was clouded by disappointment after it emerged that Arbel Yehud, 29, who had been abducted with her boyfriend from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, was not among those released on Saturday.

An Israeli military spokesman called it a breach of the truce, while Hamas said it was a technical issue. A Hamas official said the group had informed mediators that she was alive and would be freed next Saturday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Palestinians in Gaza would not be allowed to cross back to the northern part of the territory until the issue was resolved.

Palestinian officials said as many as 650,000 displaced people were waiting to return to the north beginning on Sunday under the ceasefire.

Israeli troops opened fire near crowds who gathered on a road hoping to go north, causing a stampede, witnesses said.

Medics said one person in the crowd was killed and two others injured by suspected Israeli fire. The Israeli military said troops had fired warning shots near gatherings of people that posed a threat, and it and was unaware anyone was hurt.

Thousands of people were massed with their belongings along the coastal road, where they said an Israeli tank continued to block the road to the north.

"I will not go back to the tent," Zaki Kashef, 26, waiting on the coastal road to return north from Deir Al-Balah where he has been sheltering with his family for more than a year, told Reuters via a chat app. "Where are the mediators? Why can't they force Israel to respect the deal?"

The ceasefire agreement, worked out after months of on-off negotiations brokered by Qatar and Egypt and backed by the United States, has halted the fighting for the first time in more than a year.

Following Saturday's release, 90 hostages remain in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities, who have declared around a third of them dead in absentia.

Twenty-six are still slated for release in the first phase, after which the sides are expected to negotiate the exchange of the rest, including men of military age, and withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Families of hostages due to be released in later phases worry that the ceasefire could break down first. Some Israelis critical of the truce say Israel must resume fighting to prevent Hamas from returning to power in Gaza. Hamas says it will not free all hostages until the war ends for good.

Israel launched its campaign in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, when militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's campaign has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health authorities there. More than 400 Israeli soldiers have also died in Gaza combat.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Inside the Ukrainian drone unit conducting deep strikes on Russia

As snow fell in a wooded area of Ukraine, the long-range attack drones accelerated one by one down an unlit, abandoned road and their whirring engines propelled them into the night sky.

The unmanned aircraft carrying explosive warheads are part of a Ukrainian campaign of long-range drone attacks that aim to inflict blows on Russia far behind the front line as Moscow's troops advance in the east.

"Our main goal is to conduct strikes to hit logistics hubs in the rear, ammunition warehouses and decrease our enemy's pressure on the front," said the battalion commander of the Ukrainian drone unit, who gave only the call sign Casper.

Kyiv's military granted Reuters exclusive access during the launch of the drones, but said the location and date of the strike could not be disclosed for security reasons.

Ukraine has kept much of its wartime drone programme secret, seeing it as an invaluable way to chip away at Russia's vast military industrial base despite it lacking the huge arsenal of long-range missiles that Russia has.

Moscow conducts long-range drone attacks on a nightly basis, while Kyiv has stepped up its own drone strikes in recent weeks, with U.S. President Donald Trump pushing to halt the nearly three-year full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.

The prospect of possible peace talks pushes both warring sides to try to improve their battlefield positions so they are in a stronger position to negotiate.

Russia's defence ministry said on Friday that an overnight Ukrainian attack involving more than 121 drones had targeted 13 of its regions, but that they had repelled it.

Ukraine's military said the attack hit a Russian oil refinery and a microchip factory in the Bryansk region with video posted online showing a giant plume of smoke and flames engulfing an oil refinery in Russia's Ryazan region.

Casper's unit, Ukraine's 14th Unmanned Aerial Systems Regiment, numbers a few hundred people and has its own analysts and engineers, and is focused specifically on long-range strikes.

One of the unit's founders, who uses the call sign Fidel, told Reuters that they had drones that had reached ranges of 2,000 km (1,240 miles) during combat missions.

He said their unit had carried out many strikes, including on the Russian airbase at Engels, which is located about 730 km (450 miles) southeast of Moscow and hosts strategic bombers.

Despite their impact in the war, Fidel said he believed that "unmanned systems alone cannot change the course of the war".

"You still need infantry ... you need artillery ... you need aviation, and many, many other things," he said.

Casper said they were using the domestically produced "Lyuty" drone for the strikes.

"The efficiency of our weapon is 40%-50% in total," he added.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine loses over 360 troops in Kursk area in past day — Russian Defense Ministry

Ukraine lost over 360 troops in the Kursk area in the past day, while five soldiers surrendered, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

"The Ukrainian armed forces lost over 360 troops in the past day. A tank, nine armored combat vehicles, 27 motor vehicles, a self-propelled artillery system, two mortars, and an electronic warfare system were destroyed. Six drone control points and an ammunition depot were wiped out. Five Ukrainian service members surrendered," the statement reads.

According to the ministry, units of Battlegroup Center carried out offensive operations, defeating the forces of a tank brigade, a heavy mechanized brigade, four mechanized brigades, two air assault brigades and a marine brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces and three territorial defense brigades near Viktorovka, Zaolyoshenka, Kositsa, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Malaya Loknya, Makhnovka, Mirny, Nikolayevka, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Nikolsky, Novaya Sorochina, Sverdlikovo, Sudzha and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye in the Kursk Region.

Besides, tactical and army aircraft and artillery forces hit enemy troops and equipment near Guyevo, Dmitryukov, Zazulevka, Kazachnya Loknya, Kruglenkoye, Loknya, Melovoy, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Oleshnya, Sverdlikovo, Staraya Sorochina and Yuzhny in the Kursk Region, as well as near Basovka, Belovody, Zhuravka, Miropolye and Yunakovka in the Sumy Region.

Reuters/Tass