GAZA, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Hamas' armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, has released two U.S. hostages from Gaza - a mother and her daughter - "for humanitarian reasons" in response to Qatari mediation efforts in the war with Israel, its spokesman Abu Ubaida said on Friday.

Hamas says it took about 200 hostages during a deadly Oct. 7 rampage carried out from the Gaza Strip on communities and military bases in southern Israel, part of the biggest attack on the country since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Hamas said 50 more are held by other armed groups in the enclave. It said more than 20 hostages have been killed by Israeli air strikes, but has not given any further details.

Abu Ubaida said they released the citizens "for humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by (President Joe) Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless."

ANKARA, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday called on Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza, which he said amounted to genocide, and urged the international community to work for a humanitarian ceasefire in the region.

In a post on social messaging platform X, Erdogan also said Israel was provoking non-regional actors instead of turning back from its mistakes in Gaza, adding that the region needed saving from the “frenzy of madness” supported by Western powers and media.

US and European governments have been putting pressure on Israel to delay its ground invasion of Gaza to buy time for secret talks underway via Qatar to win the release of hostages held by Hamas, according to people familiar with the efforts.

The negotiations with Hamas, designated as terrorists by the US and EU, are delicate and may fail, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss matters that aren’t public. But they said there are signs the group might agree to let at least some of the civilians its fighters captured in the deadly Oct. 7 raid go without demanding Israel release any prisoners in return.

Chinese media reported on Tuesday that more than 70 crocodiles had escaped after deluges in Guangdong province caused a lake at a crocodile farm to overflow.

Authorities asked residents around the city of Maoming to stay inside as the severity of deluges hampered the search for the reptiles

"Crocodiles are still in the water, and several government departments are working to catch them," the state-affiliated China National Radio (CNR) reported, citing the local agriculture office.

"The specific situation is still under investigation," CNR said, adding that the exact number of animals still on the loose was not known.

The newspaper Beijing News said emergency forces were sent to locate the escaped crocodiles with the help of sonar equipment.

Authorities said the high water levels had made the search difficult, and asked residents to stay indoors

Russia needs soldiers, and its authorities are increasingly turning to migrants to fill the military's ranks. Guest workers from Central Asian countries are often rounded up on the street, taken to recruitment offices and pressured into signing contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry. This process can involve threats and violence. At the same time, migrants are offered a quick path to Russian citizenship if they join the military.

The news of Russia trying to enlist migrants first reached the public just days before its troops invaded Ukraine. On February 20, 2022, Uzbeki blogger Bahrom Ismailov published a video on his YouTube channel urging migrants to sign a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry and promised they would receive Russian citizenship in six months.

After that, reports started pouring in about defense officials pressuring migrants to join the armed forces, activist and lawyer Valentina Chupik told DW. This included citizens of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and people from other migrant communities

"My colleagues and I found a video recorded by somebody from Tajikistan, who was behind a wheel of a truck in Ukraine and was saying he didn't know what was happening — he joined the Russian army and now he doesn't know if he will survive," the Uzbekistan-born lawyer said.

In response, Chupik and her associates launched a campaign to inform people and dissuade them from enlisting. The recruiters' success rate went down

But in the summer of 2022, the Ministry of Defense started recruiting laborers to do construction work in the Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine, such as Luhansk, Donetsk and Mariupol. According to the activist, large groups of people from Central Asia signed up without understanding what was happening.

"In October, some guys from Uzbekistan rang me up and asked, 'Is Mariupol in the Moscow region?'" she said, referring to the coastal Ukrainian city that was reduced to rubble before being captured by Russian forces last year.

The workers were apparently told they would be working in the Moscow Oblast.

"They were put on buses with taped up windows and taken in an unknown direction — 20 buses with 53 people on each one. After they arrived, they saw it was just ruins all around, and they started to figure out that this was not the Moscow Oblast. Somebody had my phone number and they got in touch," Chupik said.

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Santiago, Chile – Jeannette Avila takes out a white handkerchief atop Cerro Chena, a hill overlooking Chile’s capital, Santiago. Waving it up and down, she begins to dance to the music of Chile’s national dance.

“La cueca” is normally performed with a partner, but Avila is dancing alone

The photographs of Chilean political prisoners who were forcibly disappeared decades ago and whose remains have never been found are laid out at her feet. Among them is Avila’s grandfather, whose face and name are emblazoned on her T-shirt.

“My grandfather, Roberto Avila, was a railroad worker and a protestant pastor, and we know that he was executed here with others,” Avila told Al Jazeera during a memorial two weeks ago to the more than 100 people who are believed to have been killed in this spot in the 1970s and 1980s.

It was almost as though nothing at all had happened. In May 2023, Arabic leaders welcomed long-ostracized Syrian dictator Bashar Assad back into the fold at the Arab League summit – complete with brotherly kisses, warm embraces and the proverbial red carpet, which skewed violet in this particular case

Syria had been blacklisted in 2011 when the regime in Damascus began shooting at demonstrators, who were still largely peaceful at the time. In the years that followed, Assad’s troops – with the enthusiastic support of first the Hezbollah and then the Iranians and Russians – transformed the rebellious parts of the country into smoking heaps of rubble, killing hundreds of thousands of Syrians and forcing millions more to flee

At the summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, though, all seemed to be forgotten – as if it had merely been a minor misunderstanding. Syria was readmitted with the appropriate pomp. "We stand together against the currents of darkness," said Assad, portraying the mass murder he committed to cling to power as a noble undertaking

In Syria’s dictatorship, meanwhile, nothing has changed, with mafia-like structures still flourishing in the economy as well. Drug smuggling, in particular to Saudi Arabia and Jordan, continues apace – and all this despite hopes from Arab League member states that welcoming Damascus back into the group might slow down the illicit drug flows

Instead, Syria’s ruling family is deeply involved in illegal business dealings. That is illustrated by the case of a Syrian executive whose activities have been uncovered by a team of Syrian and international journalists together with DER SPIEGEL. In early March 2023, the travel agency FreeBird Travel and Tourism announced on its website: "Hello Europe – we’re back." After more than a decade of isolation, the airline Air Mediterranean, flights on which accordingly could only be booked via FreeBird, was offering direct connections to Europe. The first flight from Düsseldorf to Damascus via Athens took place on June 24, and since then the airline has been servicing the route once a week.

The FreeBird website lists two offices, one in Dubai and another in Athens. The agency is actually registered in the Damascus Free Trade Zone, where no information about company owners is made public

FreeBird’s chairman would have remained a secret – had he not gone public himself with the information: Mahmoud Abdullah Aldij, a major player in the transportation industry, both from and to Syria. On Facebook, Aldij presents himself as the head of FreeBird as well as a representative of the Syrian airline Cham Wings, which is on the U.S. sanctions list for transporting both militia fighters and munitions on behalf of the Syrian regime. But it seems that Aldij has made a name for himself in another transport sector as well: as a drug smuggler who, according to investigators, was involved in at least three large shipments of the synthetic stimulant Captagon to Libya. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reported on the investigation into Aldij back in 2021

Elon Musk says he refused to give Kyiv access to his Starlink communications network over Crimea to avoid complicity in a "major act of war".

Kyiv had sent an emergency request to activate Starlink to Sevastopol, home to a major Russian navy port, he said.

His comments came after a book alleged he had switched off Starlink to thwart a drone attack on Russian ships.

A senior Ukrainian official says this enabled Russian attacks and accused him of "committing evil".

Russian naval vessels had since taken part in deadly attacks on civilians, he said.

"By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities," he said.

"Why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?" he added.

The row follows the release of a biography of the billionaire by Walter Isaacson which alleges that Mr Musk switched off Ukraine's access to Starlink because he feared that an ambush of Russia's naval fleet in Crimea could provoke a nuclear response from the Kremlin.

Ukraine targeted Russian ships in Sevastopol with submarine drones carrying explosives but they lost connection to Starlink and "washed ashore harmlessly", Mr Isaacson wrote.

Starlink terminals connect to SpaceX satellites in orbit and have been crucial for maintaining internet connectivity and communication in Ukraine as the conflict has disrupted the country infrastructure.

Sudanese activists hope the International Criminal Court (ICC) will provide justice for the victims of crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago, even as fresh abuses are reported in a new war that has enveloped large parts of Sudan.

Many blamed a climate of impunity for emboldening old and new perpetrators to commit grave crimes, amid the nationwide conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)

Rights groups and the United Nations have accused the RSF of committing summary executions, burying victims in mass graves and using rape as a weapon of war. The United States responded to these reports by sanctioning two senior RSF commanders on September 6

“The crimes committed under [former President] Omar al-Bashir in 2003 are the reason for the crimes being committed today. He’s the one that gave legitimacy and power to the Arab militias [that later become the RSF],” said Selma Ahmed,* a human rights lawyer from West Darfur who fled to Egypt in May.

Despite the new cycle of violence, some form of justice for thousands of victims may finally be within reach. The ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said in August that the case against former Sudanese Arab militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman – better known as Ali Kushayb – should conclude early next year.

Al-Bashir and three other suspects are not in the custody of the ICC, yet a conviction against Kushayb could establish a precedent of accountability amid efforts to gather evidence for fresh investigations, experts and activists told Al Jazeera.

“Kushayb is the biggest perpetrator who is responsible for killing probably the most people [in 2003],” said Mohamad Sharif, a human rights lawyer who fled West Darfur to Chad in June

Kushayb faces 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for acts that he allegedly committed between 2003 and 2004.

At the time, he was commanding one of the Arab tribal militias that the government outsourced to crush an insurgency by mostly non-Arab armed groups who were rebelling against Darfur’s political and economic marginalisation.

Many of those Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, were later repackaged into the RSF in 2013

The indictments against Kushayb are supported by 56 witnesses who appeared before the court when Khan presented his case in April.

Despite the mounting evidence, Emma DiNapoli, a human rights lawyer who focuses on Sudan, suspects that Kushayb’s lawyers will argue that he did not receive training in international human rights law and that he did not commit crimes that violate Sudanese law.

“Those would be bad arguments [if they make them] because crimes like genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are all customary law,” DiNapoli told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, human rights monitors in Darfur are gathering evidence of new crimes committed since the outbreak of the war on April 15. In July, activists told Al Jazeera that they welcomed Khan’s announcement that he was launching a new probe.

But Somaya Amin*, an activist who fled Darfur to Uganda in May, said that the court must assume a more active role in helping monitors document evidence.

“We need help with classification and documentation. We need help from the court in order to build cases against criminals [from the RSF and the army],” she told Al Jazeera over the phone.

“We are asking the court to listen to the voices affected by this war and to especially investigate reports of sexual violence,” she added

Some activists fear that any sentence against Kushayb or new indictments issued by the ICC could put more people at risk.

Ahmed, the lawyer now in Egypt, told Al Jazeera that there is a precedent of human rights monitors and witnesses of atrocities being threatened and killed.

She referenced an attack on a camp housing non-Arab, internally displaced people in January 2021 in West Darfur, where Arab militias and RSF fighters killed more than 160 people, according to Amnesty International.

Human rights lawyers from West Darfur said that about 20 of the victims were killed for opening up police reports against Arab fighters and RSF commanders who attacked the same camp a year earlier.

“The attackers came to kill the witnesses in their homes after threatening them [for weeks] over the phone,” she told Al Jazeera. “The others that didn’t die in the attack refused to open new cases against the perpetrators.”

The RSF and allied Arab militias are accused of having settled more scores during the war. In May, they killed attorney Khamis Arbab, according to activist groups and people close to him, for his role in building cases against RSF fighters for involvement in attacks on displacement camps.

The Pentagon is repositioning some troops and equipment within Niger and will withdraw a small number of non-essential personnel "out of an abundance of caution," U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday, the first major American military movement in Niger since a coup in July.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to say how many personnel would be departing and how many were repositioning within Niger from Air Base 101 in Niamey, the capital, to Air Base 201 in the city of Agadez.

Before this movement, there were 1,100 troops in the West African country.

"This consolidation represents prudent military planning to safeguard U.S. assets while continuing to address the threat of violent extremism in the region," one of the officials said.

"This does not change our overall force posture in Niger, and we continue to review all options as we assess a way forward," the official added.

"The movement of U.S. assets has been coordinated with and approved by the appropriate authorities."

The officials declined to give more details on the reason for the repositioning. It is generally easier to evacuate people from a single location, though there is no evidence that is imminent.

Over the past decade, U.S. troops have trained Niger's forces in counter-terrorism and conducted drone missions against Islamic State and an al Qaeda affiliate in the region.

After the coup, the United States paused certain foreign assistance programs for Niger and military training has been on hold. Troops have largely been confined to the bases.

The administration of President Joe Biden has not formally labeled the military takeover in Niger a coup, a designation that would limit what security assistance Washington can provide the country.

"The leaders of this attempted coup are putting Niger's security at risk, creating a potential vacuum that terrorist groups or other malign groups may exploit," the official said.

The United States has been pressing for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis that erupted on July 26 when Niger military officers seized power, deposed President Mohamed Bazoum and placed him under house arrest.

The new U.S. ambassador to Niger, Kathleen FitzGibbon, only arrived in the capital, Niamey, last month.

The U.S. drone base known as Air Base 201 was built near Agadez in central Niger at a cost of more than $100 million. Since 2018, it has been used to target Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliate Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), in the Sahel.

It has grown in importance due to a lack of Western security partners in the region.

Military juntas have come to power through coups in Mali and Burkina Faso - both neighbors of Niger - in recent years. More than 2,000 French troops left Mali last year and a 13,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force is due to shut down by the end of the year after the junta abruptly asked it to leave.

France, Niger's former colonial power, also has troops in the country. But so far, Paris has rejected calls by the coup leaders to withdraw their 1,500 troops

After 200 meetings held in 60 Indian cities through the year, the campaign to turn India's G20 presidency into a global triumph has reached fever pitch in the run-up to the leaders' summit this weekend.

Delhi has been adorned with huge billboards and posters - displaying Prime Minister Narendra Modi's image alongside a message welcoming delegates - signifying India's readiness to embrace the world.

And all of this effort will finally come down to the leaders' summit and their ability to release a joint declaration that signals broader agreement on issues of global concern.

India has been pushing hard for a declaration - if this summit ends without one, it will be a first. But that's not going to be easy

The war also loomed large over last year's G20 summit in Indonesia, but the group was able to put together a hurried declaration that noted the differences within the G20 over Ukraine.

But positions have hardened since then - Russia and China may not agree to give such concessions and the West, led by the US, will also not accept anything less than a clear condemnation of the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are not attending and that might make decision-making a little harder. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and China's Premier Li Qiang will represent their countries instead, but they may not have the political heft to make last-minute concessions without consulting their leaders.

The G20 foreign and finance ministers' meetings also ended without a joint declaration earlier this year.

But India will still hope that the Ukraine issue doesn't derail the concerns of the Global South - developing countries - that it wants to discuss.

The G20 countries account for 85% of the world's economic output and 75% of world trade. They contain two-thirds of the global population. India has repeatedly said the group has a responsibility towards countries not present in the G20, and in doing so, has established itself as the voice of the Global South.

The African Union's presence at the G20 has further bolstered India's position on the needs of the developing world.

"The issues like debt, rising food and energy prices have been exacerbated by the war and the pandemic. India and other developing countries in the G20 would want industrialised economies to contribute capital to resolve these issues," says Tanvi Madan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

But an agreement on these issues is also not certain. Take debt refinancing for example - India and other developing countries have been advocating that rich countries and institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should give relief to nations that have been struggling to repay their loans.

But no negotiation on this can happen without discussing China. David Malpass, president of the World Bank until recently, said in December that the world's poorest countries owed $62bn in annual debt service to creditors and that two-thirds of this was owed to China.

This has put many countries at risk of default, exacerbating poverty and skyrocketing food and energy prices.

China's lending practices have been often described as predatory by Western officials - an allegation Beijing rejects

Ms Madan adds that developing countries "need their creditors to help them restructure their timelines" and in some cases "help them with more financing".

"We don't know what will come out of this meeting yet, but the idea has been to reach some sort of compromise," she adds.

G20 nations agreed on a Common Framework (CF) for debt restructuring of poor countries in 2020, but progress has been slow. The West has blamed China for dragging its feet, which it denies.

But India, which has ongoing border tensions with China, will want to get more commitment from rich countries - it has advocated extending the CF to more Global South nations (including middle-income countries), a move the EU has also endorsed in the past.

But if the West insists on blaming China for the debt crisis, it could become a roadblock.

India also wants global regulation on cryptocurrencies and an overhaul of institutions like the World Bank and the IMF - these issues are likely to be less fractious.

Climate change is another issue that Delhi has repeatedly raised, saying that some of the poorest countries are the most vulnerable due to extreme weather events

Mr Modi on Thursday wrote in an article that "ambitions for climate action must be matched with actions on climate finance and transfer of technology".

His words reflect the divisions within the group over climate change financing. Developing countries don't want to sign up to ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gases, fearing it would halt their growth. Instead, they blame industrialised countries for the crisis and demand that they take on a bigger share of the burden and commit money, technology and infrastructure to help them cut emissions.

Happymon Jacob, a professor of foreign policy at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, says that he doesn't expect a decisive breakthrough on climate change.

"But it's clear that it's going to be one of the major agenda items of the G20 and Delhi would push rich countries to commit more resources to the cause," he adds.

Food and energy security are also up for discussion and it's expected that some consensus might be reached on this - though this will depend on Moscow agreeing to restart a deal with Kyiv which allowed Ukrainian grain to reach international markets. Analysts say any breakthrough over this deal within the G20 framework is highly unlikely.

Agreements on agriculture, pandemic preparedness, healthcare and the global supply chain are likely to happen but it's not clear if they will be a part of the joint declaration.

Meanwhile, a topic that's unlikely to come up is India's deteriorating human rights track record under Mr Modi's government, which critics and opposition leaders have often questioned.

Analysts say that despite pressure from activists and rights groups, Western leaders may not raise this issue at the talks in India - which is seen as an indispensable ally in attempts to contain China's rise

Some analysts, like Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center think-tank, say the absence of a declaration would be a setback for India and Mr Modi, as well as the G20.

But he adds that India has a track record of working with countries that don't get along with each other, pointing to how it has "successfully managed its relations with both Russia and the US".

"So Delhi could be that country which is able to work through their differences. It wants to leverage its reputation of a balancer, but it's going to be very difficult."

Ms Madan says the absence of a joint declaration won't necessarily be a failure as Delhi will be able to issue a chair's summary (which host countries can do) which can show consensus on 90% of the issues.

But a fractious G20 would also make many question the relevance of the forum in a fast-changing world.

China has been promoting other platforms like the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The Brics recently inducted Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE - all of them have good relations with China - into the group.

India is one of the few countries that are part of the Brics and the SCO, as well as of West-dominated forums like the Quad, G7 (as an invited member) and the G20.

In that context, it's important for Delhi to deliver a successful summit with actionable outcomes which will bolster its status as an important global power and Mr Modi's image as a consequential world leader.

It will show Delhi's ability to not only understand but also balance competing demands of different multilateral forums. And it will also help further boost the Indian PM's image at home, where a general election is due next year.

With Mr Modi taking foreign policy to smaller Indian towns and cities through G20 events, the stakes are high for him both at home and in the global political order

The EU's top court has dismissed a case against European border agency Frontex, brought by a family of Syrian refugees who were sent out of Greece to Turkey in 2016.

Lawyers for the family had argued the EU agency should be held accountable for the refugees being deported without having the chance to apply for asylum.

So-called pushbacks are illegal under international law.

But the European Court of Justice rejected their challenge.

"Since Frontex does not have the power to assess the merits of return decisions or applications for international protection, that EU agency cannot be held liable for any damage," the Court ruled.

The Syrian family - a husband, wife and four small children - from the Kurdish town of Kobani arrived in Greece in October 2016.

They were among an estimated one million Syrians fleeing the war there who came to Greece during the European migrant crisis.

The family, who has not been named, registered a pre-asylum application registering their wish for international protection on the Greek island of Leros, a small island in the Aegean where many little boats carrying refugees were arriving from Turkey, and were then taken to the island of Kos.

Eleven days after arriving in Greece, their lawyers say the family was put on a plane to Turkey by Frontex and the Greek authorities "without having being able to apply for asylum and without an expulsion decision".

The family say they were told they were being taken to Athens when they boarded the plane.

During the flight, in the presence of Frontex staff, the parents were separated from their four young children, who were one, two, five and six years old at the time, their lawyers say. They were not permitted to talk to anyone on the journey.

Lawyers say there were 10 asylum seekers on the flight and approximately 25 officials, including Frontex staff.

After reaching Turkey, they were held in the Duzici detention camp, in the south of the country. When they were released, they had no access to housing, water or sanitation in Turkey, so they fled to northern Iraq.

In 2021, the family took their case to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, in a lawsuit handled by human rights lawyers and supported by the Dutch Council for Refugees.

After the ruling, the father told RTL Nieuws they had lost hope: "We've suffered an injustice and Frontex has to be held responsible for it."

The family's lawyers said they aimed to appeal against the ruling.

Lisa-Marie Komp from law firm Prakken d'Oliveira said: "You can't just deport people to another country. Before someone can be deported, it must be assessed whether he or she needs asylum protection and that has not happened here."

The Dutch Council for Refugees said the case was about more than one Syrian family.

In a joint statement, the law firm and refugee council said the Court's ruling was unsatisfactory.

Frontex had great power over the lives of individuals, they said, and yet individuals could not hold the agency accountable in court for how it treated them.

They added that the judgement also raised questions about how Frontex should monitor respect for fundamental rights in its activities, as required under its mandate.

Frontex said it now required EU member states to confirm that people had been given the chance "to seek international protection and their applications had been properly processed in line with EU laws".

In a recent briefing, the European Parliament said that human rights organisations, the media and civil society organisations regularly reported "cases of pushbacks or collective expulsions at the EU's land and sea borders" often involving "excessive use of force" by EU member states authorities.

It said Frontex has been accused of failing to safeguard people