World
Hamas kingpin holed up deep below Gaza, surrounded by hostages used as human shields, says expert
JERUSALEM – The terrorist mastermind behind Hamas’ massacre of nearly 1,200 people, including over 30 Americans, is believed to be using hostages as human shields to hold off Israeli soldiers seeking to capture him in a tunnel deep below Gaza.
The shocking information about Hamas kingpin Yahya Sinwar was revealed by Gen. Jack Keane, FOX News Channel senior strategic analyst and former U.S. army vice chief of staff, in an interview with Sky News Australia on Thursday.
Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar speaks to a crowd. (Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“My sources tell me that Sinwar, who is the number one leader in Gaza of the Hamas organization, has 15-20 hostages protecting him and his family,” Keane said. “That’s why they have these hostages, to guarantee their survival. Israel is absolutely right in putting military pressure on them to force the release of the hostages.”
Keane’s revelation coincides with statements by Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, in an interview with Israeli news outlet Channel 12 on Saturday that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) nearly killed Sinwar. Hanegbi said Sinwar “is living on borrowed time,” and that “he won’t emerge alive from this confrontation.”
Israel is offering a $400,000 bounty for the capture of Sinwar. In December, Israel dropped leaflets on Gaza offering rewards for information about the location of Hamas’ top leadership.
Hanegbi said the IDF was close to killing Sinwar over the last few months. “It is apparently hard for [Sinwar] to make a decision [regarding a hostage agreement] that is likely to mean the end of Hamas rule,” noted Hanegbi, who added that “because the minute he gives up on the highly significant card for his survival, our hostages, it’s not easy for him, and that’s why things are delayed.”
UN, HUMAN RIGHTS, MEDIA GROUPS RELY ON HAMAS DEATH TOLL IN ‘SYSTEMATIC DECEPTION’: EXPERT
Terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar waves during a rally. (Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua via Getty Images)
The citizenship composition of the hostages being used by Sinwar – in violation of international humanitarian law – is unclear. Five Americans are believed to be among the more than 100 hostages held by Hamas.
Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and as part of its slaughter of roughly 1,200 people, the terrorist group took over 200 hostages into Gaza. A November hostage deal secured the freedom of more than 100 hostages, mostly women and children, in exchange for Israel’s release of dozens of Palestinian terrorists.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a military operation into Rafah – the last major city controlled by Hamas and where Sinwar is believed be hiding with his hostages. Israel’s security objective is also to destroy the tunnels between Egypt and Rafah that enable Hamas to smuggle in weapons.
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Israel is offering a $400,000 bounty for the capture of Yahya Sinwar. (Mohammed Talatene/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The Biden administration has thus far opposed Israel’s war plan to defeat Hamas in Rafah because of concerns of civilian deaths.
Hamas retains four battalions in Rafah coupled with thousands of terrorist fighters. While the Rafah operation looms, complex negotiations are unfolding in Cairo and may slow the pace of Israel’s efforts to root out Hamas terrorists in the city populated with more than a million Palestinians.
David Wurmser, a former senior adviser for nonproliferation and Middle East strategy for former Vice President Dick Cheney, said about Sinwar’s use of hostages that “the holding of hostages – since he values their lives nil – is nothing more than, say, a soldier taking cover behind a tree or rock when under heavy fire. It is not cowardice, but an intelligent and primordial impulse. He has no more empathy for a hostage than a soldier does for the rock. Indeed, the same with the ‘innocent’ Palestinian civilians.”
UN, HUMAN RIGHTS, MEDIA GROUPS RELY ON HAMAS DEATH TOLL IN ‘SYSTEMATIC DECEPTION’: EXPERT
An Israeli official said the IDF was close to killing Sinwar over the last few months. (Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“All is part of a very sober and rational strategy. And given the amount he has taken control of Israeli and U.S. policy with hostages and human shields, it’s a very rational strategy,” Wurmser added. “We consider it cruel – but that requires empathy, which he is devoid of, and immoral, but that implies that advancing Islam at all costs is the ultimate morality and the filter for determining whether an action is moral or not.”
Yaakov Katz, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute who was a former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, where he remains a columnist, told Fox News Digital that Sinwar is crafty and ruthless.
“Sinwar has played Israel very smartly since Oct. 7, sometimes seeming as if he understands Israel better than Israel understands itself. He has used the hostages effectively to achieve his goals and has managed to keep himself always a step ahead of the IDF in its efforts to capture or kill him.”
World
‘Predators’: Amnesty slams Netanyahu Putin, Trump, as human rights decline
London, United Kingdom – Israel, Russia and the United States are leading the destruction of global human rights, Amnesty International has said, describing the three countries’ leaders as “voracious predators” intent upon economic and political domination.
“A global environment where primitive ferocity could flourish has been long in the making,” Agnes Callamard, the head of the global rights group, wrote in an annual report on the state of the world’s human rights that was released on Tuesday.
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In 2025, “sharp U-turns were taken away from the international order that had been imagined out of the ashes of the Holocaust and the utter destruction of world wars, and constructed slowly and painfully, albeit insufficiently, over these past 80 years,” she said.
In a news conference on Monday in London, Callamard said that most governments tend to appease the “predators” rather than confront them.
“Some even thought to imitate the bullies and the looters,” she said.
Spain, however, which is an outlier in Europe for its criticism of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and US-Israeli attacks on Iran, “is standing above the double standard that is destroying the international system”, Callamard said.
She argued that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who in 2022 sent his forces into neighbouring Ukraine, have had an “absolutely dramatic” impact on the world.
Their conduct is “emboldening all of those that are tempted by similar behaviours,” said Callamard. “It is allowing for the multiplication of copycats around the world, and therefore what we are confronting now is much more aggressive and ferocious than what we had to confront three or four years ago.”
‘Authoritarian practices have intensified worldwide’
Amnesty’s review of the state of the world’s human rights makes for grim reading, documenting attacks on fundamental civil liberties in most nations.
“Authoritarian practices have intensified worldwide”, the report reads, before running through abuses alleged in countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe in 400 pages.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Russia’s “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine, and the US-Israeli war on Iran were noted as examples of conflict in which international laws have been ignored.
In a section on repression, the United Kingdom is blamed for cracking down on the Palestine solidarity movement and Palestine Action, the direct-action group that targets sites associated with the Israeli military and is currently fighting a legal battle against its UK proscription as a “terrorist” organisation.
Afghanistan’s Taliban was responsible for further gender-based discrimination in 2025, the report noted, citing measures excluding women from education and work, while Nepalese authorities were said to have failed to investigate instances of gender-based violence against Dalit women.
Amnesty’s report comes as multiple conflicts rage across the world.
The US-Israeli assault on Iran has killed more than 3,000 people, while Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed nearly 2,400. In Gaza, the confirmed number of people killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 has surpassed 72,500 as the decimated territory is continually threatened by Israeli bombardment. In Ukraine, more than 15,000 have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion began more than four years ago.
Conflicts in the Middle East are a “product of the descent into lawlessness, made possible by a vision of the world in which war-making and the killings of civilians are normalised”, said Callamard.
“No effective steps have been taken against Israel for its repeated, constant violation of basic standards of humanity.”
However, there is some room for optimism, Amnesty said.
It listed moments of “resistance” such as Gen Z-led protests; the growing number of states joining South Africa’s case against Israel’s genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ); the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) crimes against humanity charges against former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte; the Council of Europe’s special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine; and the ICC’s arrest warrant against two Taliban leaders for “gender-based persecution”.
World
Patrick Muldoon, ‘Days of Our Lives’ and ‘Melrose Place’ Actor, Dies at 57
Patrick Muldoon, an actor who starred in “Days of Our Lives” and “Melrose Place,” died on Sunday, his manager confirmed to Variety. He was 57.
From 1992 to 1995, Muldoon originated the role of Austin Reed on the daytime soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” He returned to the soap to reprise the role from 2011 to 2012.
He also had a recurring role as Jeffrey Hunter in the teen television series “Saved by the Bell” in 1991. Muldoon also starred on the primetime soap opera “Melrose Place” from 1995 to 1996, playing the villain Richard Hart.
In 1997, Muldoon played the role of Zander Barcalow in the film “Starship Troopers,” directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Muldoon was also an active producer, working on a slew of movies including “The Tribes of Palos Verdes,” “Arkansas,” “Marlowe,” “The Card Counter,” “The Dreadful” and “Riff Raff” through his Storyboard Productions. He was set to produce the upcoming feature “Kockroach,” starring Chris Hemsworth. Just two days ago, Muldoon posted on Instagram: “So excited to be a part of this amazing project KOCKROACH directed by Matt Ross starring Chris Hemsworth, Taron Edgerton, Zazzie Beetz and Alec Baldwin.” The production is currently filming in Australia.
His latest acting role was in “Dirty Hands,” a new crime thriller with Denise Richards and Michael Beach. The film is slated to be released later this month.
Muldoon is survived by his partner, Miriam Rothbart; parents Deanna and Patrick Muldoon, Sr.; sister and brother-in-law Shana and Ahmet Zappa, niece Halo and nephew Arrow Zappa.
World
Massive 7.5-magnitude earthquake hits off Japanese coast, tsunami alert issued
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A strong earthquake took place off the northern coast of Japan Monday afternoon, prompting the Japan Meteorological Agency to put out a tsunami alert in the area.
The quake, registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.5, occurred off the coast of Sanriku in northern Japan at around 4:53 p.m. local time, at a depth of about 6 miles below the sea surface, the agency said.
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A television screen shows a news report on Japan Meteorological Agency’s tsunami warning, saying it expected tsunami waves of up to 3 meters (9.84 feet) to reach large coastal areas in northern Japan after an earthquake struck off the northeastern coast of Japan, in Tokyo, Japan April 20, 2026 (REUTERS/Issei Kato)
A tsunami of around 2.6 feet was identified at the Kuji port in the Iwate prefecture while a tsunami of 1.3 feet was recorded at a different port in the prefecture, the agency indicated.
The Iwate prefecture put out non-binding evacuation advisories for those living in 11 towns.
A tsunami of as high as 10 feet could strike the region, the agency indicated.
RUSSIAN VOLCANO ERUPTS FOR FIRST TIME IN CENTURIES AFTER MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE STRIKES KAMCHATKA PENINSULA
A policeman picks his way through the debris looking for bodies in Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture, on March 22, 2011, after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami. (TORU YAMANAKA/AFP via Getty Images)
A powerful 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011 wreaked havoc in Japan, leaving over 22,000 dead and compelling nearly 500,000 people to flee their homes, most of them because of tsunami damage.
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In this satellite view, the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power plant after a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 14, 2011 in Futaba, Japan. (DigitalGlobe via Getty Images via Getty Images)
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Around 160,000 fled their residences due to radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant — around 26,000 have not come back because they resettled somewhere else, their hometowns are still off-limits, or they harbor concerns regarding radiation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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