Connect with us

CBS News

Hamas uses Israeli hostage Noa Argamani in propaganda videos to claim 2 other captives killed by IDF strikes

Avatar

Published

on


Hamas released a series of propaganda videos on Sunday and Monday showing three Israeli hostages — Noa Argamani, Yossi Sharabi and Itai Savirsky — who were abducted during the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. After saying the fate of all three hostages would be announced later, Hamas released a video Monday showing Argamani saying that her fellow captives, 53-year-old Yossi Sharabi and 38-year-old Itai Svirsky, had been killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, before showing what appeared to be the men’s bodies.

Hostage videos are often filmed under duress and feature forced statements, and CBS News cannot independently verify the videos, the information conveyed by the hostages speaking in the Hamas clips, or when the videos were filmed. Hamas has previously issued false claims about hostages being killed by Israeli strikes in the Gaza.

In the first video posted online Sunday, the three hostages are seen sitting separately against a bare wall and speaking to the camera, asking for an end to the war. The second video, posted Monday, showed photos of the same hostages overlaid by graphics asking the audience to guess whether each person was alive, wounded or dead. The final video released Monday showed Argamani saying to the camera that Sharabi and Savirsky were killed in IDF airstrikes.


Israelis protest for hostages’ release as clashes increase with Hezbollah at the Lebanon border

02:24

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari Monday in response to the videos that “Itai was not shot by our forces — this is a Hamas lie. The building where they were being held was not a target, and it was not struck by our forces.”

Hagari also said that the IDF “did not know their real-time location; we do not strike in places where we know there may be hostages. In hindsight, we know we struck targets near to the location where they were being held. We are investigating the event and its circumstances, examining the images distributed by Hamas, alongside additional information at our disposal.”

CBS News reached out to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum for comment but had not heard back at the time of publication of this article.

Argamani, 26, was at the Supernova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7 when she was abducted by Hamas militants on the back of a motorcycle. Video showed her being driven away with her arms outstretched, yelling for help.


No end in sight as Israel-Hamas war hits 100-day mark

03:19

Noa’s mother Liora Argamani has brain cancer and has publicly pleaded for her daughter’s release, saying she doesn’t know how much time she has left to see her.

Sharabi and Svirsky were both kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Bari in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Sharabi lived at the kibbutz and Svirsky was there visiting his mother.

Sunday marked 100 days since the Hamas attack, which triggered the ongoing war in Gaza. Israeli officials say more than 240 people were taken hostage from Israel and about 1,200 killed in that attack. Around half of the hostages were released during a negotiated pause in hostilities with Hamas in November.

Israeli officials say 132 hostages are still being held in Gaza and 25 have died in captivity, according to the Reuters news agency.

Israel Poised To Invade Gaza As Worries Of Regional Escalation Grow
Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas are displayed on a wall in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 18, 2023.

LEON NEAL/Getty


Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health says more than 24,000 people have been killed in the densely populated Palestinian enclave since the war began. Hamas officials do not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths. Most of the population of Gaza has been displaced amid Israeli air and ground operations to destroy Hamas, which is classified as a terror organization by the U.S., Israel and the European Union.

“The military operation takes time. It obligates us to be precise, and we are adapting it in accordance with the threats and the hostages who are in the field,” the IDF’s Hagari said Sunday.

As the war reached its 100th day on Sunday, Gil Dickmann, whose 39-year-old cousin Carmel Gat is still among the unaccounted for hostages in Gaza, said he and other family members of the captives, “feel desperate.”

Israeli Tech Leaders Meet Families At Kibbutz Be'eri
Gil Dickmann, whose cousin, Carmel Gat, is being held hostage in Gaza, poses in the entrance to the partially destroyed Gat family house which was left in ruins after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 in this photo taken on December 13, 2023.

Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty


“The whole point, as they told us, of the second stage of the war, of moving in through the ground, was in order to get the hostages back… and the hostages aren’t here,” Dickmann told CBS News.

“They forgot about us,” he said. “I’m really trying to get answers, and I don’t really receive them because they’re just telling me to wait.”



Read the original article

Leave your vote

CBS News

Suspect detained in killing of Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s biological, chemical forces in Moscow blast

Avatar

Published

on


Moscow — Russia’s security service said Wednesday that it has detained a suspect in the killing of a senior general in Moscow.

The suspect was described as an Uzbek citizen recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, didn’t name the suspect, but said he was born in 1995. According to an FSB statement, the suspect said he was recruited by Ukrainian special services.

Ukrainian security sources had told CBS News Monday that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) killed Kirillov in a special operation. The claim couldn’t be independently verified, but Russian officials quickly vowed to take revenge against Ukraine’s leaders.  

RUSSIA-BLAST-MILITARY
In this screengrab from an AFPTV footage, Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s radiological, biological and chemical protection unit, speaks at a press briefing in June 2018.

AFPTV / AFP via Getty Images


Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security service leveled criminal charges against him. His assistant also died in the attack. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack.

The FSB said the suspect had been promised a reward of $100,000 and permission to move to a European Union country in exchange for killing Kirillov.

The agency stated that, acting on instructions from Ukraine, the suspect traveled to Moscow, where he picked up a homemade explosive device. He then placed the device on an electric scooter and parked it at the entrance to the residential building where Kirillov lived.

The suspect then rented a car to monitor the location and set up a camera that livestreamed footage from the scene to his handlers in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Once Kirillov was seen leaving the building, the suspect detonated the bomb.

According to the FSB’s statement, the suspect faces “a sentence of up to life imprisonment.”

Kirillov, 54, was the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces and was under sanctions from several countries, including the U.K. and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.

Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.

Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances – claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.

The bomb used in Tuesday’s attack was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched brickwork.

Head of Russian nuclear protection forces killed in Moscow explosion
A view of the scene after Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Defense Troops, and his assistant were killed in an explosion in Moscow on December 17, 2024. 

Sefa Karacan / Anadolu via Getty Images


Russia’s top state investigative agency said it’s looking into Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.



Read the original article

Leave your vote

Continue Reading

CBS News

Indiana conducts first execution in 15 years, puts quadruple killer to death

Avatar

Published

on


Michigan City, Indiana — An Indiana man convicted of killing four people including his brother and his sister’s fiancé decades ago was put to death Wednesday, without any independent witness, marking the state’s first execution in 15 years.

Joseph Corcoran, 49, was pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m. CST at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, the Indiana Department of Correction said in a statement. CBS Indianapolis affiliate WTTV reports that officials said the execution process started just after midnight.

joseph-corcoran.jpg
Undated photo provided by the Indiana Department of Corrections shows Joseph Corcoran.

Indiana Department of Corrections via AP


Corcoran was scheduled to be executed with the powerful sedative pentobarbital, but the state agency’s statement did not mention that drug. Corcoran’s execution was the 24th in the U.S. this year.

According to WTTV,  the statement said Corcoran told officials his last words were, “Not really. Let’s get this over with.”  

He was convicted in the July 1997 shootings of his brother, 30-year-old James Corcoran, his sister’s fiancé, 32-year-old Robert Scott Turner, and two other men, Timothy G. Bricker, 30, and Douglas A. Stillwell, 30.

According to court records, before Corcoran fatally shot the four victims he was under stress because the forthcoming marriage of his sister to Turner would necessitate moving out of the Fort Wayne, Indiana, home he shared with his brother and sister.

While jailed for those killings, Corcoran reportedly bragged about fatally shooting his parents in 1992 in northern Indiana’s Steuben County. He was charged in their killings but acquitted.

Last summer, Gov. Eric Holcomb announced plans to resume state executions following a yearslong hiatus marked by a scarcity of lethal injection drugs nationwide.

The state provided limited details about the execution process, and no media witnesses were permitted under state law.

Indiana and Wyoming are the only two states that do not allow members of the media to witness state executions, according to a recent report by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Corcoran’s attorneys had fought his death penalty sentence for years, arguing he was severely mentally ill, which affected his ability to understand and make decisions. This month, his attorneys asked the Indiana Supreme Court to stop his execution but the request was denied.

Corcoran exhausted his federal appeals in 2016. But his attorneys asked the U.S. District Court of Northern Indiana last week to stop his execution and hold a hearing to decide if it would be unconstitutional because Corcoran has a serious mental illness. The court declined to intervene Friday, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit did the same Tuesday.

Corcoran’s attorneys then asked the U.S. Supreme Court issue an emergency order halting his execution, but the high court denied their request for a stay late Tuesday, ending Corcoran’s options with the courts.

His sole remaining hope then became Holcomb, who could have commuted Corcoran’s death sentence. But that commutation never came and the execution proceeded as scheduled.

WTTV says Holcomb issued a statement saying Corcoran’s case “has been reviewed repeatedly over the last 25 years – including 7 times by the Indiana Supreme Court and 3 times by the U.S. Supreme Court, the most recent of which was tonight. His sentence has never been overturned and was carried out as ordered by the court.”

Indiana’s last state execution was in 2009 when Matthew Wrinkles was put to death for killing his wife, her brother and sister-in-law in 1994.

Since then, 13 executions were carried out in Indiana, but those were initiated and performed by federal officials in 2020 and 2021 at a federal prison in Terre Haute.

State officials have said they couldn’t continue executions because a combination of drugs used in lethal injections had become unavailable.

For years, there has been a shortage across the country because pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell their products for that purpose. That’s pushed states, including Indiana, to turn to compounding pharmacies, which manufacture drugs specifically for a client. Some use more accessible drugs such as the sedatives pentobarbital or midazolam, both of which, critics say, can cause intense pain.

Religious groups, disability rights advocates and others have opposed his execution. About a dozen people, some holding candles, held a vigil late Tuesday to pray outside the prison, which is surrounded by barbed wire fences in a residential area about 60 miles east of Chicago.

“We can build a society without giving governmental authorities the right to execute their own citizens,” said Bishop Robert McClory of the Diocese of Gary, who led the prayers.

Other death penalty opponents also demonstrated outside the prison Tuesday night, some holding signs that read “Execution Is Not The Solution” and “Remember The Victims But Not With More Killing.”

“There is no need and no benefit from this execution. It’s all show,” said Abraham Borowitz, director of Death Penalty Action, his organization that protests every execution in the U.S.

Prison officials said in a brief statement Tuesday evening that Corcoran “requested Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for his last meal.”

Corcoran said farewell late Tuesday to relatives, including his wife, Tahina Corcoran, who told reporters outside the prison that they discussed their faith and their memories, including attending high school together. She reiterated her request for Indiana’s governor to commute her husband’s death sentence.

Tahina Corcoran said her husband is “very mentally ill” and she didn’t think he fully grasped what was happening to him.

“He is in shock. He doesn’t understand,” she said.



Read the original article

Leave your vote

Continue Reading

CBS News

1 killed, 9 injured in shooting, fiery crash in Baltimore suburb of Towson, police say

Avatar

Published

on


1 dead, 9 injured in mass shooting, fiery crash in Towson, police say


1 dead, 9 injured in mass shooting, fiery crash in Towson, police say

06:24

BALTIMORE — One person was killed and nine others injured in a shooting and fiery crash in the Baltimore suburb of Towson Tuesday night, authorities said.

Law enforcement responded at around 7:15 p.m. in the 8500 block of Loch Raven Boulevard, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said in a news briefing. 

“It appears to be a mass shooting incident,” McCullough told reporters. “We have multiple persons who were shot. Right now, we are determining the circumstances and the conditions in this case.”


Baltimore County Police provide update to mass shooting in Towson

10:11

The first arriving officer found a vehicle on its side in flames near a funeral home, McCullough said, and then several gunshot victims were found in the area. 

“There appears to be some type of incident that led to the vehicle crashing and catching on fire,” McCollough said. “Investigators are looking into the circumstances leading up to that.”   

The name of the person killed and the manner of death was not released, nor were the conditions of the nine people injured. McCollough did not specify how many of the nine people injured were gunshot victims. 

At this time, investigators believe this was an isolated and targeted incident, with no further threat to the community, he added. It’s unclear if any suspects have been arrested. There was no word on a possible motive. 

“We will leave no stone unturned and we will dedicate every resource to this,” McCullough said. “We don’t generally see incidents like this in our community in Baltimore County. I assure you as your police chief that we will put all resources toward trying to clear this case.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was at the scene assisting police, as was the Baltimore County Fire Department.

“This is an incident that is shocking, particularly for those of us in Baltimore County,” said Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski. “These types of incidents are unheard of here, so it really shocks the conscience. However, we want our residents to know that we are, as always, fully committed to ensuring that both our fire and police departments have the full support and all the resources they need from the Baltimore County government to ensure that they bring this investigation to a conclusion.” 

Anyone with information is asked to call Baltimore County Police at 410-887-4636.



Read the original article

Leave your vote

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2024 Breaking MN

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.