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‘My children, my children’: The Gaza family killed minutes before ceasefire

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‘My children, my children’: The Gaza family killed minutes before ceasefire

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Palestine – The ceasefire in Gaza was supposed to start at 8.30am (06:30 GMT). The al-Qidra family had endured 15 months of Israeli attacks. They had been displaced more than once and were living in a tent. Their relatives had been among the more than 46,900 Palestinians killed by Israel.

But the al-Qidras had survived. And they wanted to go home.

Ahmed al-Qidra packed his seven children onto a donkey cart and headed to eastern Khan Younis. It was finally safe to travel – the bombing should have stopped.

But the family did not know that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas had been delayed. They did not know that, even in those additional few hours, Israeli aircraft were still flying over the skies of Gaza, ready to drop their bombs.

The explosion was loud. Ahmed’s wife Hanan heard it. She had stayed behind at a relative’s home in the centre of the city, organising their belongings, planning on joining her husband and children a few hours later.

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“The blast felt like it hit my heart,” Hanan said. She instinctively knew that something had happened to her children, whom she had only just said goodbye to.

“My children, my children!” she screamed.

The cart had been hit. Hanan’s eldest son, 16-year-old Adly, was dead. So was her youngest, six-year-old Sama, the baby of the family.

Yasmin, 12, explained that a four-wheel drive was in front of the cart carrying people celebrating the ceasefire. Perhaps that was the reason the missile hit.

“I saw Sama and Adly lying on the ground, and my father bleeding and unconscious on the cart,” Yasmin said. She pulled her eight-year-old sister Aseel out before a second missile hit the spot where they had been. Eleven-year-old Mohammed also survived.

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But Ahmed, Hanan’s partner in life, was pronounced dead in the hospital.

The vehicle travelling ahead of the al-Qidras’ donkey cart may have been targeted in the Israeli air attack [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

‘My children were my world’

Sitting on the edge of her injured daughter Iman’s hospital bed in Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, Hanan was still shell-shocked.

“Where was the ceasefire?” she asked. In their excitement to finally return to whatever was left of their home, the family had missed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring that the Palestinian group Hamas had not sent over the names of the three Israeli captives who would be released on Sunday as part of the ceasefire deal.

They had not seen Hamas explain that there were technical reasons for the delay, and that the names would be provided, as they eventually were.

They would not know that in the three-hour delay before the ceasefire eventually began, three members of their family would be killed. They were among the 19 Palestinians killed by Israel in those last few hours, according to Gaza’s Civil Defence.

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Hanan al-Qidra sits with a daughter, her other daughter lays on hospital bed
Hanan al-Qidra has to take care of her remaining children on her own after her husband Ahmed was killed in the Israeli attack in Khan Younis on January 19 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Hanan broke down in tears. She would now have to face life without her husband and without two of her children. The loss of Sama, “the last of the bunch” as she described her with the Arabic saying, was particularly hard.

“Sama was my youngest and the most spoiled. She’d get angry whenever I talked about having another child.”

Adly had been her “pillar of support”. Her children were her world.

“We endured this entire war, facing the harshest conditions of displacement and bombardment,” Hanan said. “My children dealt with hunger, a lack of food and basic necessities.”

“We survived more than a year of this war, only for them to be killed in its last minutes. How can this happen?”

A day of joy had been turned into a nightmare. The family had celebrated the end of the war the night before.

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“Hasn’t the Israeli army had enough of our blood and the atrocities they committed for 15 months?” Hanan asked.

Then, she thought of her future. With her husband and two of her children ripped away from her, and with tears coming down her face, she asked: “What’s left?”

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Video: Humpback Whale Stranded Off German Coast Is Freed by Rescuers

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Video: Humpback Whale Stranded Off German Coast Is Freed by Rescuers

new video loaded: Humpback Whale Stranded Off German Coast Is Freed by Rescuers

In a last-ditch effort, rescuers were at last able to free a 40-foot humpback whale that had been stuck in shallow waters near the coast of Germany for four days.

By Axel Boada

March 27, 2026

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Russian man who assaulted woman during Barron Trump FaceTime call sentenced to 4 years

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Russian man who assaulted woman during Barron Trump FaceTime call sentenced to 4 years

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A Russian man convicted of assaulting a woman in London in an attack witnessed by Barron Trump, President Donald Trump’s youngest son, on a video call was sentenced to four years in prison by a London court on Friday. 

Matvei Rumiantsev, 23, an MMA fighter, was convicted by a jury on Jan. 28 of assault with bodily harm but was acquitted of rape and choking charges. He was also convicted of perverting the course of justice stemming from a letter he sent the woman from jail asking her to retract her allegations.

After the assault, Rumiantsev admitted he was jealous of his girlfriend’s friendship with the 19-year-old son of President Donald Trump.

BARRON TRUMP REPORTEDLY SAVED WOMAN’S LIFE AFTER WITNESSING VIOLENT ASSAULT ON FACETIME CALL

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Barron Trump attends inauguration ceremonies in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool/Getty Images)

“Your lack of insight and empathy was apparent at trial,” Justice Joel Bennathan said. “You continue to try to blame the complainant for everything that has happened.”

Trump told investigators he had placed a late-night FaceTime call to the woman, whom he had met on social media, and had been startled when the call had been briefly answered by a shirtless man on Jan. 18, 2025.

“That view lasted maybe one second and I was racing with adrenaline,” Barron Trump said. “The camera was then flipped to the victim getting hit while crying, stating something in Russian.”

BARRON TRUMP SPOTTED ON NYU CAMPUS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE INAUGURATION

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Barron Trump looks on ahead of the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2025. (KEVIN LAMARQUE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Barron Trump called the police in London.

“It’s really an emergency … I’m calling from the U.S., uh, I just got a call from a girl, you know, she’s getting beat up,” he told an operator. 

Police responded to the address and arrested Rumiantsev, a London-based receptionist.

At his trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court, Rumiantsev was acquitted of rape and choking related to the attack, as well as a separate rape and assault allegation from November 2024.

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His attorney, Sasha Wass, said that Trump wasn’t aware the woman had a boyfriend and questioned how much he could have seen in just a few seconds of video. 

Barron Trump watches as his father, President Donald Trump attends an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event at Capital One Arena, in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

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Trump never testified in the case. However, the judge praised him for his quick-thinking actions. 

“Mr, Trump properly and responsibly, despite being in the United States, made sure the emergency services here were called, and he told them what he had seen,” he said.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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EU Parliament unblocks key political hurdle in digital euro talks

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EU Parliament unblocks key political hurdle in digital euro talks

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EU lawmakers have overcome a key political hurdle in the negotiations of digital euro, making the project closer to approval, according to a draft text seen by Euronews.

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The Parliamentary rapporteurs involved in the legislation have found an agreement on the design of the digital euro, which will be able to function both online and offline.

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The digital euro would be an electronic form of cash issued by the European Central Bank, designed to sit alongside banknotes and the payments services offered by commercial banks.

It has taken on new political weight as economic tensions between the EU and the US sharpen the debate over Europe’s reliance on American payment giants, such as Visa and Mastercard.

Under the European Commission’s proposal, digital euro users would have a wallet for both online and offline payments, with transactions designed so they are not trackable.

The situation in Parliament changed on Wednesday evening, when the centre-right politician Fernando Navarrete, who is the leading rapporteur on the file, announced the withdrawal of his position to reduce the scope of the digital euro to offline use only.

His position blocked the advancement of negotiations for months, jeopardising the whole legislative process, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations.

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The political deadlock has pushed EU leaders to accelerate progress on the digital euro. At the European Council meeting on 19 March, they set a goal to have the digital euro legislation approved by the end of 2026.

With the Council, representing EU countries, having already adopted its position, the European Parliament is now the only institution left to advance the law.

“Thanks to our amendments and firm stance, we have finally broken the political deadlock on the digital euro. The distinction between online and offline has been removed, and it is now established as a single payment system,” Pasquale Tridico, the rapporteur for The Left, told Euronews.

However, lawmakers still need to agree on two key aspects: the “hold limits” and the “compensation.”

The hold limits determine the maximum amount a user can store in a digital euro wallet, while compensation sets out a model for reimbursing commercial banks that provide digital euro services.

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Although negotiations are not yet complete, the text is expected to be voted on in the Parliament’s economy committee before the summer, according to a source familiar with the matter.

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