Former President Jair Bolsonaro presented top Brazilian military leaders with a plan to stage a coup after he lost the 2022 election, newly released court documents have alleged.

The country’s Supreme Court released the testimonies from former army commander Marco Antonio Freire Gomes and former air force commander Carlos de Almeida Baptista Jr. to the Brazilian Federal Police on Friday.

Bolsonaro allegedly presented the plan in a meeting on December 7, 2022, at the presidential palace in Brasilia.

In their testimonies, both Gomes and Baptista Jr. said they refused to carry out Bolsonaro’s alleged plan to stay in power and threatened to arrest him, documents show.

Bolsonaro surrendered his passport to authorities in early February as part of a police investigation into an alleged coup attempt. The former president has denied the allegations.

He recently led a large rally of his supporters in Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, which he said was in “defense of the democratic rule of the law.”

Last year, Bolsonaro was barred from running for political office until 2030 by the country’s highest electoral court for abusing his power and misusing public media during the 2022 election campaign.

After Bolsonaro lost that election by a narrow margin to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his supporters rioted and broke into government buildings in Brasilia on January 8, 2023.

Bolsonaro has denied inciting the violent attacks in the capital.

A Hong Kong court on Saturday sentenced 12 people to between 54 and 82 months in prison over the storming of the city’s legislature council building during a pro-democracy protest in 2019, the city’s public broadcaster RTHK said.

RTHK said the defendants were convicted of rioting on July 1, 2019, when a large group of protesters smashed through glass doors and stormed Hong Kong’s legislative council building after weeks of mass demonstrations.

Deputy District Court judge Li Chi-ho said the storming of the building represented a challenge to the Hong Kong government and had long-lasting effects on the city, according to RTHK.

Among the defendants, actor Gregory Wong was sentenced to six years and two months in prison, while activists Ventus Lau and Owen Chow were jailed for four and a half years and 61 months, respectively, RTHK reported.

Two reporters who were previously acquitted of rioting were fined 1,500 Hong Kong dollars ($192) and 1,000 Hong Kong dollars ($128) for entering the legislature, according to RTHK.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Scientist Dr. Randal Voss gets the occasional reminder that he’s working with a kind of superstar. When he does outreach events with his laboratory, he encounters people who are keen to meet his research subjects: aquatic salamanders called axolotls.

The amphibians’ fans tell Voss that they know the animals from the internet, or from caricatures or stuffed animals, exclaiming, “‘They’re so adorable, we love them,’” said Voss, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. “People are drawn to them.”

Take one look at an axolotl, and it’s easy to see why it’s so popular. With their wide eyes, upturned mouths and pastel pink coloring, axolotls look cheerful and vaguely Muppet-like.

They’ve skyrocketed in pop culture fame, in part thanks to the addition of axolotls to the video game Minecraft in 2021. These unusual salamanders are now found everywhere from Girl Scout patches to hot water bottles. But there’s more to axolotls than meets the eye: Their story is one of scientific discovery, exploitation of the natural world, and the work to rebuild humans’ connection with nature.

A scientific mystery

Axolotl is a word from Nahuatl, the Indigenous Mexican language spoken by the Aztecs and an estimated 1.5 million people today. The animals are named for the Aztec god Xolotl, who was said to transform into a salamander. The original Nahuatl pronunciation is “AH-show-LOAT”; in English, “ACK-suh-LAHT-uhl” is commonly used.

Axolotls are members of a class of animals called amphibians, which also includes frogs. Amphibians lay their jelly-like eggs in water, and the eggs hatch into water-dwelling larval states. (In frogs, these larvae are called tadpoles.)

Most amphibians, once they reach adulthood, are able to move to land. Since they breathe, in part, by absorbing oxygen through their moist skin, they tend to stay near water.

Axolotls, however, never complete the metamorphosis to a land-dwelling adult form and spend their whole lives in the water.

“They maintain their juvenile look throughout the course of their life,” Voss said. “They’re teenagers, at least in appearance, until they die.”

A signature feature of the axolotls’ forever-young look is their frilled external gills, which help them breathe in their watery home — the only spot they’re found in the wild: Lake Xochimilco in Mexico City.

It’s a bit of a scientific mystery why axolotls don’t transform into adult, land-dwelling versions of themselves. One hypothesis, according to Dr. Luis Zambrano, a professor of zoology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is that the environment in Lake Xochimilco had enough resources for the salamanders that “it was by far better for them not to expend energy transforming and stay in the lake.”

The 10-square-mile Lake Xochimilco is a unique body of water, a natural drainage basin with slightly salty water. More than 1,000 years ago, Xochimilca people in the region invented an agricultural system of human-made floating islands called chinampas. The chinampa system, with its drainage canals surrounding the islands, is still used by farmers called chinamperos today. The islands provided habitats and hiding places for the axolotls, which thrived among the chinampas for 1,000 years.

However, the chinampas of Lake Xochimilco are no longer thriving, and neither are the salamanders. “The problems started at the beginning of the last century,” Zambrano said.

Axolotl problems

As Mexico City grew and became more industrialized, the need for water brought pumps and pipes to the lake, and eventually, “it was like a bad, smelly pond with rotten water,” Zambrano said. “All of our aquatic animals suffer with bad water quality, but amphibians suffer more because they have to breathe with the skin.”

To add to the axolotls’ problems, invasive fish species such as carp and tilapia were introduced to the lake, where they feed on axolotl eggs. And a 1985 earthquake in Mexico City displaced thousands of people, who found new homes in the area around the lake, further contributing to the destruction of the axolotls’ habitat.

These combined threats have devastated axolotl populations. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, there are fewer than 100 adult axolotls left in the wild. The species is considered critically endangered.

While the wild axolotls of Lake Xochimilco have dwindled to near-extinction, countless axolotls have been bred for scientific laboratories and the pet trade. “The axolotl essentially helped establish the field of experimental zoology,” Voss said.

In 1864, a French army officer brought live axolotls back to Europe, where scientists were surprised to learn that the seemingly juvenile aquatic salamanders were capable of reproduction. Since then, scientists around the world have studied axolotls and their DNA to learn about the salamanders’ unusual metamorphosis (or lack thereof) as well as their ability to regrow injured body parts.

In addition to their role in labs, axolotls have become popular in the exotic pet trade (though they are illegal to own in California, Maine, New Jersey and Washington, DC). However, the axolotls you might find at a pet shop are different from their wild relatives in Lake Xochimilco. Most wild axolotls are a dark grayish brown. The famous pink axolotls, as well as other color variants such as white, blue, yellow and black, are genetic anomalies that are rare in the wild but selectively bred for in the pet trade.

What’s more, “most of the animals in the pet trade have a very small genetic variance,” Zambrano said. Pet axolotls tend to be inbred and lack the wide flow of different genes that makes up a healthy population in the wild. That means that the axolotl extinction crisis can’t simply be solved by dumping pet axolotls into Lake Xochimilco. (Plus, the pet axolotls likely wouldn’t fare well with the poor habitat conditions in the lake.)

Fame and misfortune

The difficulties that axolotls face in the wild are almost diametrically opposed to the fame they’ve found in recent years. Axolotls have captured the human imagination for centuries, as evidenced by their roles in Aztec religion and stories, but the early 21st century seems to be a high point for them. An axolotl graces the 50 peso bill. There are axolotl-inspired Pokemon, and Reddit commenters have noted that the character Toothless from the “How to Train Your Dragon” movie series is distinctly axolotl-like.

The introduction of axolotls to Minecraft in 2021 neatly mapped onto an uptick in Google searches for the animals, and social media makes it easy for people to gain access to photos and videos of the salamanders, particularly the photogenic pink ones often kept as pets.

The axolotl pet trade probably doesn’t directly harm the wild populations since wild salamanders aren’t being poached or taken from Lake Xochimilco. However, Zambrano said, axolotls’ ubiquity in pop culture and pet stores might make people assume that because axolotls “live in all the tanks around the world, they are not in danger.”

Zambrano has been working in axolotl conservation for more than two decades. It’s a somewhat unusual challenge, he said, because axolotls live so closely to so many people, so the answer to saving them isn’t simply to create a wildlife preserve and keep people out.

“We have to be inventive in terms of the new ways of restoration and resilience and sustainable decisions,” he said.

These new practices include outreach efforts that aim for “synergy between local knowledge and scientific knowledge,” Zambrano said, especially among the chinamperos whose families have farmed the islands in Lake Xochimilco for generations.

A widespread return to the chinampa system, he said, would benefit the axolotls, because it would ensure cleaner habitat space for the salamanders than the lake’s current, more industrial uses provide.

Such efforts would require policy changes, but according to Zambrano, worldwide enthusiasm for the axolotls could bolster such a campaign. People who love them can even symbolically adopt an axolotl to help fund conservation programs. Getting people to recognize that their favorite, friendly faced salamander doesn’t just exist in the vacuum of the internet, but in the real world where it faces dire conservation challenges, Zambrano said, is “a huge achievement.”

Kate Golembiewski is a freelance science writer based in Chicago who geeks out about zoology, thermodynamics and death. She hosts the comedy talk show “A Scientist Walks Into a Bar.”

A Hong Kong court on Saturday sentenced 12 people to between 54 and 82 months in prison over the storming of the city’s legislature council building during a pro-democracy protest in 2019, the city’s public broadcaster RTHK said.

RTHK said the defendants were convicted of rioting on July 1, 2019, when a large group of protesters smashed through glass doors and stormed Hong Kong’s legislative council building after weeks of mass demonstrations.

Deputy District Court judge Li Chi-ho said the storming of the building represented a challenge to the Hong Kong government and had long-lasting effects on the city, according to RTHK.

Among the defendants, actor Gregory Wong was sentenced to six years and two months in prison, while activists Ventus Lau and Owen Chow were jailed for four and a half years and 61 months, respectively, RTHK reported.

Two reporters who were previously acquitted of rioting were fined 1,500 Hong Kong dollars ($192) and 1,000 Hong Kong dollars ($128) for entering the legislature, according to RTHK.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Russia says it killed large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers with a so-called “vacuum bomb”, a powerful munition that sucks in oxygen from the surroundings to sustain an explosion.

The deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces told Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during a meeting that up to 300 soldiers were killed “as a result of an accurate strike by an aerial munition,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

Colonel General Alexei Kim did not indicate where the strike took place but described the location of the strike as the “deployment point of the ‘Kraken’ nationalist formation,” according to the ministry, referring to a special unit of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence.

Kim said a “volumetric detonation bomb” was used in the airstrike, RIA Novosti reported Saturday.

Volumetric weapons are also known as vacuum bombs, thermobaric weapons or fuel-air explosives.

The destruction caused by a thermobaric weapon is caused by the blast wave it creates and also the vacuum resulting from the fuel-air mixture sucking in oxygen to sustain the detonation, according to the Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York.

The force of such a blast is enough to collapse buildings and rupture organs. Walls or even caves don’t provide protection, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Details of the Russian airstrike emerged during a meeting at the headquarters of the Joint Group of Forces, where Shoigu heard reports from commanders on the current situation in the “zone of the special military operation,” the ministry said, Russia’s phrase for its war in Ukraine.

Kim also did not mention when the strike was carried out but noted that “over the past week alone, as a result of effective work of reconnaissance and strike systems, three American Patriot complexes, a Vampire multiple rocket launcher, more than 10 foreign-made artillery systems and fuel and ammunition depots were destroyed,” according to the ministry.

Kim also told Shoigu during the meeting that Ukraine is “suffering significant losses in both equipment and manpower as a result of the use of high-precision weapons and strike drones,” the ministry said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Russia says it killed large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers with a so-called “vacuum bomb”, a powerful munition that sucks in oxygen from the surroundings to sustain an explosion.

The deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces told Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during a meeting that up to 300 soldiers were killed “as a result of an accurate strike by an aerial munition,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

Colonel General Alexei Kim did not indicate where the strike took place but described the location of the strike as the “deployment point of the ‘Kraken’ nationalist formation,” according to the ministry, referring to a special unit of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence.

Kim said a “volumetric detonation bomb” was used in the airstrike, RIA Novosti reported Saturday.

Volumetric weapons are also known as vacuum bombs, thermobaric weapons or fuel-air explosives.

The destruction caused by a thermobaric weapon is caused by the blast wave it creates and also the vacuum resulting from the fuel-air mixture sucking in oxygen to sustain the detonation, according to the Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York.

The force of such a blast is enough to collapse buildings and rupture organs. Walls or even caves don’t provide protection, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Details of the Russian airstrike emerged during a meeting at the headquarters of the Joint Group of Forces, where Shoigu heard reports from commanders on the current situation in the “zone of the special military operation,” the ministry said, Russia’s phrase for its war in Ukraine.

Kim also did not mention when the strike was carried out but noted that “over the past week alone, as a result of effective work of reconnaissance and strike systems, three American Patriot complexes, a Vampire multiple rocket launcher, more than 10 foreign-made artillery systems and fuel and ammunition depots were destroyed,” according to the ministry.

Kim also told Shoigu during the meeting that Ukraine is “suffering significant losses in both equipment and manpower as a result of the use of high-precision weapons and strike drones,” the ministry said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Polls in the world’s largest democracy India will open on April 19, the country’s election commissioner announced on Saturday, setting the stage for a nationwide election expected to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi clinch a rare third consecutive term.

An estimated 960 million people in a country of 1.4 billion are eligible to vote in the widely anticipated polls that will take a month to complete.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to secure another five years in power, ruling an India that has become increasingly polarized along religious lines.

Polling will unfold over seven phases around the country ending on June 1.

Indians will be voting for 543 seats in the 545-seat lower house of parliament, called the Lok Sabha, and the other two seats in the house are nominated by the president.

All the votes – from the country’s 28 states and eight union territories – will be counted on June 4, the commission said at a press conference in New Delhi.

Under Modi’s leadership, India is poised to become a 21st-century powerhouse as its economy rapidly expands.

But the populist leader, analysts say, has tightened his grip on its democratic institutions in a way not seen since the 1970s under the iron-fisted rule of Indira Gandhi, with minorities feeling persecuted under the BJP’s Hindu-nationalist policies and dissent muzzled.

Going against Modi is the main opposition Indian National Congress, which has governed the country for much of the 77 years since independence and last year formed an alliance with other parties. The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA, marked a significant step for an opposition struggling to regain national significance.

But cracks in the alliance have already emerged, and it has yet to put forward its candidate for prime minister, lacking anyone with the kind of star quality and appeal projected by Modi.

The prime minister’s calendar last year included diplomatic trips to Australia and the United States, where he presented himself as a statesman cementing the country as a modern global power.

In August, India made history by soft-landing a rover on the moon, becoming just the fourth nation to do so. Weeks later, it launched its first spacecraft dedicated to studying the sun.

India hosted the Group of 20 (G20) in September, presenting New Delhi with an opportunity to extend its leadership beyond the country’s borders at a time of increasing political turmoil.

This January, Modi marked the unofficial start of his election campaign when he inaugurated the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, a Hindu temple in the holy city of Ayodhya that was built on the site of the destroyed Babri mosque.

The consecration of that temple, analysts said, marked the seismic shift from India’s secular founding values as Modi disregards the norms dividing religion from state in his push to win a third term. But it was received well in many quarters, with Modi’s followers praising the leader for his dedication to the majority Hindu faith.

In 2019, Modi’s BJP won 303 seats in parliament, taking it over the threshold of 272 required for an absolute majority, dealing a humiliating blow to the Congress party.

Last year, India surpassed China as the world’s most populous country. Its working-age population now stands at more than 900 million, according to 2021 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This number is expected to hit more than 1 billion over the next decade, according to the Indian government.

The election commission said 968.8 million people have registered to vote in the 2024 polls – a 6% increase from 2019.

Polls in the world’s largest democracy India will open on April 19, the country’s election commissioner announced on Saturday, setting the stage for a nationwide election expected to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi clinch a rare third consecutive term.

An estimated 960 million people in a country of 1.4 billion are eligible to vote in the widely anticipated polls that will take a month to complete.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to secure another five years in power, ruling an India that has become increasingly polarized along religious lines.

Polling will unfold over seven phases around the country ending on June 1.

Indians will be voting for 543 seats in the 545-seat lower house of parliament, called the Lok Sabha, and the other two seats in the house are nominated by the president.

All the votes – from the country’s 28 states and eight union territories – will be counted on June 4, the commission said at a press conference in New Delhi.

Under Modi’s leadership, India is poised to become a 21st-century powerhouse as its economy rapidly expands.

But the populist leader, analysts say, has tightened his grip on its democratic institutions in a way not seen since the 1970s under the iron-fisted rule of Indira Gandhi, with minorities feeling persecuted under the BJP’s Hindu-nationalist policies and dissent muzzled.

Going against Modi is the main opposition Indian National Congress, which has governed the country for much of the 77 years since independence and last year formed an alliance with other parties. The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA, marked a significant step for an opposition struggling to regain national significance.

But cracks in the alliance have already emerged, and it has yet to put forward its candidate for prime minister, lacking anyone with the kind of star quality and appeal projected by Modi.

The prime minister’s calendar last year included diplomatic trips to Australia and the United States, where he presented himself as a statesman cementing the country as a modern global power.

In August, India made history by soft-landing a rover on the moon, becoming just the fourth nation to do so. Weeks later, it launched its first spacecraft dedicated to studying the sun.

India hosted the Group of 20 (G20) in September, presenting New Delhi with an opportunity to extend its leadership beyond the country’s borders at a time of increasing political turmoil.

This January, Modi marked the unofficial start of his election campaign when he inaugurated the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, a Hindu temple in the holy city of Ayodhya that was built on the site of the destroyed Babri mosque.

The consecration of that temple, analysts said, marked the seismic shift from India’s secular founding values as Modi disregards the norms dividing religion from state in his push to win a third term. But it was received well in many quarters, with Modi’s followers praising the leader for his dedication to the majority Hindu faith.

In 2019, Modi’s BJP won 303 seats in parliament, taking it over the threshold of 272 required for an absolute majority, dealing a humiliating blow to the Congress party.

Last year, India surpassed China as the world’s most populous country. Its working-age population now stands at more than 900 million, according to 2021 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This number is expected to hit more than 1 billion over the next decade, according to the Indian government.

The election commission said 968.8 million people have registered to vote in the 2024 polls – a 6% increase from 2019.

A giant blueberry that tips the scales at a whopping 20.4 grams (0.71 ounces) officially entered the record books this week.

The record-breaking berry measured 39.31 millimeters (1.55 inches) across, roughly the same size as a table tennis ball. It was grown in Corindi, New South Wales, Australia, by staff at blueberry grower Costa Group.

It is from the Eterna variety, which senior horticulturalist Brad Hocking said is known for its large fruit size, crisp texture and long shelf life, according to a statement from the company published Tuesday.

“Eterna as a variety has a really great flavour and consistently large fruit. When we picked this one, there were probably around 20 other berries of a similar size,” Hocking said in the statement.

The previous record for heaviest blueberry was held by a 16.20-gram (0.57-ounce) berry grown in Western Australia in 2020, according to Costa, which develops new varieties of blueberries that can be grown in different conditions.

“This really is a delightful piece of fruit,” said Hocking in the statement. “While the fruit is large, there’s absolutely no compromise on quality or flavour as would be expected when developing a premium variety blueberry.”

Other notable fruits that appear in the Guinness World Records include a strawberry weighing 289 grams (10 ounces), grown by Israeli farmer Chahi Ariel, which earned the record for world’s heaviest strawberry in February 2022.

And in August 2019 a monster grapefruit broke two records and became the world’s heaviest and largest grapefruit by circumference.

Weighing more than 7 pounds 14 ounces and measuring 28.75 inches, it was about the size of a regulation basketball and weighed as much as a baby or a chihuahua.

“I cannot now reassure you, anyone, because all these war prisoners are facing the same bombardment and starvation our people (are) facing on the ground,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, even as he “absolutely” denied the allegations of sexual abuse.

During the interview, Naim rejected defining Hamas’ attacks as terrorism, falsely claiming that his organization does not target civilians. Instead, he blamed Israel for carrying out what he claimed is “state terrorism” in Gaza and reiterated Hamas’ calls for Palestinians to join in “armed resistance” against Israel during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began Sunday night.

Israel has denied targeting civilians and accuses Hamas of hiding behind civilian infrastructure. More than 31,000 people, a majority of whom are women and children, have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military campaign began, according the health ministry in the enclave.

Fate of hostages, sexual violence allegations

A week after a United Nations team led by UN special representative Pramila Patten said it found “clear and convincing information” that some women held hostage by Hamas had been raped or sexually abused, and that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe the sexual violence was ongoing, Naim said he “absolutely” denied the allegations.

“She was not able to show any proof and solid evidence from an eyewitness,” Naim said. “She hasn’t met any of the victims.”

Patten’s team interviewed 34 people, obtaining firsthand accounts from released hostages as well as testimony from survivors, and witnesses, health and service providers, and first responders to the October 7 attack.

“Based on the first-hand accounts of released hostages, the mission team received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity,” the UN report says.

Hamas has denied international organizations any access to those hostages still in captivity to assess their wellbeing.

While Naim denied the allegations of sexual violence, he said Hamas was unable to account for the wellbeing of the hostages because of the continued bombardment of Gaza. A ceasefire, he said, was necessary to “collect more data” about their fate.

The odds of a ceasefire agreement materializing remain uncertain.

For weeks, mediators have described the deal as one that would happen in multiple phases, and the first stage would see the fighting pause for about six weeks and the release of around 40 Israeli hostages and a large number of Palestinians.

The proposal envisions that a permanent ceasefire would be agreed upon after that initial exchange of hostages and prisoners, as well as a deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas has consistently demanded a permanent ceasefire and the pullback of Israeli troops as a condition of any deal, which the Israeli government has rejected.

Upon receiving the latest proposal, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office called it “ridiculous” and said Thursday that “Hamas is continuing to hold to unrealistic demands,” but an Israeli delegation is being sent to Doha, Qatar for further talks.

“Our impression is it is not going to be easy to convince the Israelis of this,” the diplomat said.

“Do you believe that we are so naive to accept going for a temporary humanitarian ceasefire for six weeks or two months to give the Israelis all what (they are) looking for?” Naim said. “I think any, any rational politician around the world, he will expect to reach a permanent quiet, a permanent ceasefire so that we can go from this point out to relieve the people on the ground to rebuild the Gaza Strip again.”

Asked for a response to Naim’s remarks, an Israeli government official said: “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has freed 112 hostages to date and is committed to free all the hostages. Once Hamas’ delusional demands come down to earth, there can be another humanitarian pause for a hostage release deal,” the official said.

Israel has limited the amount of humanitarian aid entering key parts of the Gaza Strip and is responsible under international humanitarian law for ensuring that Gaza’s civilian population does not starve.

As for Hamas’ responsibility?

“First of all, yes, we have all the responsibility towards our people. And therefore, from day one, we have looked for ending this aggression and stopping the slaughter of our people. And we have contacted all the mediators to reach a final, total ceasefire. But you are accusing Hamas, as if we are the ones who are committing all these crimes, and who are blocking all the humanitarian aid to come into Gaza,” Naim said.

In recent weeks, many civilians in Gaza have increasingly blamed Hamas for the mounting starvation. When speaking about the distribution of aid, displaced individuals accused Hamas of taking humanitarian aid meant for civilians and taking it for its fighters.

Naim denied the claims, asserting that Hamas was “fighting for the people, and not fighting against the people.”

Ramadan and the ‘month of jihad’

The interview came during the first week of Ramadan, which has been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in previous years. This year, it comes against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza, Israeli crackdowns on Palestinian militant groups in the occupied West Bank and Hamas’ calls for more attacks.

Ahead of the interview, Hamas issued a statement calling on the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank “to continue clashing with the Zionist occupation in support of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and our steadfast people in Gaza, especially as we experience the blessings of the holy month of Ramadan, the month of jihad and resistance.”

Naim said Palestinians have a right to pursue “freedom and dignity” and an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital through both diplomatic means and what he called “armed resistance.”

But pressed on whether Hamas is seeking to inspire terrorist attacks against Israel during Ramadan, Naim rejected that label.

Naim also insisted that Hamas does not target civilians, but Israeli settlers armed with weapons and those responsible for violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas killed hundreds of civilians – including women and children – during its attack on October 7 and has targeted civilians for years, in addition to carrying out attacks on Israeli forces.