International News from Friday, January 31st, 2025

Palestinian group Hamas said on Friday it would free the father of the youngest hostages seized in its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and two others including a dual US citizen in the next exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

The US military said it killed a senior operative of Al-Qaeda's Syria branch in an air strike on northwestern Syria on Thursday.

Two people were killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley area, the Lebanese health ministry said on Friday, after the Israeli military said it had struck several Hezbollah targets there overnight and along the Syrian-Lebanese border.

Investigators recovered the so-called black boxes from an American Airlines jet, which collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River in Washington DC on Wednesday night, as authorities continued to search for answers.

A small US security firm is hiring nearly 100 US special forces veterans to help run a checkpoint in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas truce, according to Reuters sources, introducing armed American contractors into the heart of one of the world's most violent conflict zones.

Hamas freed three Israeli and five Thai hostages in Gaza on Thursday and Israel released 110 Palestinian prisoners after delaying the process in anger at the swarming crowds at one of the hostage handover points.