Hamas releases all 6 hostages as planned in latest exchange

(LONDON) — Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani said late Monday that his forces “will not hesitate to hold accountable” alleged war criminals and torturers that operated as part of President Bashar Assad’s toppled regime.

Jolani — whose real name is Ahmed al-Sharaa — and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham forces are the most prominent of the rebel factions that defeated Assad’s government after 14 years of civil war. HTS and its ally rebel groups — operating under the umbrella Syrian Salvation Government — are now working to assert control of the wartorn nation.

Rebel forces offered a general amnesty for all conscripted Syrian military personnel. But Jolani said in a statement that the new authorities will seek “just punishment” for those accused of involvement in the regime’s alleged human rights abuses.

“We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” Jolani said in a statement posted to the rebels’ Military Operations Command Telegram channel.

“We will pursue war criminals and demand them from the countries to which they fled so that they may receive their just punishment,” he added.

Authorities will also prepare a wanted list “that includes the names of the most senior officials involved in torturing the Syrian people,” Jolani said. “We will offer rewards to anyone who provides information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes.”

Crowds of rebel fighters and civilians descended on Assadist prisons as the regime collapsed during a 10-day surprise offensive. Rebel forces freed prisoners in every major city they passed through on the road to Damascus.

The most infamous facility was the Sednaya prison in the capital, which is believed to have held thousands of people. The prison has previously been described as the “Human Slaughterhouse” by Amnesty International.

Footage from inside showed rebels and local residents surging through its corridors to free groups of men, women and children from cells.

A former prisoner at Sednaya — Omar Alshogre — told ABC News that the prison “is known to have women” and that detainees there have been subjected to sexual abuse.

“Some women give birth and the children born and grew up in prison,” Alshogre said. “They don’t see anything but the walls of the cell. They do not know what a ball is or a bird is or a tree. This is not knew but it’s always shocking to see the pictures of it.”

The Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, appealed for information on suspected secret areas of the prison where it feared detainees were still being held. The group said it concluded its search on Monday having failed to find any “unopened or hidden areas.”

“Specialized teams conducted a thorough search of all sections, facilities, basements, courtyards, and surrounding areas of the prison,” the White Helmets said in a statement.

“These operations were carried out with the assistance of individuals familiar with the prison and its layout,” it added. However, no evidence of undiscovered secret cells or basements was found.”

The White Helmets said there are “thousands who remain missing and whose fates are unknown.”

Assad fled to Russia as the rebels closed in on the capital. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin will grant his Syrian ally political asylum.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told journalists on Monday that “the people of Syria are probably going to want him to return home and stand judgment for his crimes in Syria.”

Asked whether Assad might stand trial at the International Criminal Court, Miller responded, “If he’s not going to return home from Russia, I doubt he’s going to transfer himself to The Hague, leaving Russian protection either.”

ABC News’ William Gretsky and Helena Skinner contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic descriptions of wartime injuries.

(NEW YORK) — A little over a year ago, Motassembelah “Motassem” Abuzayed was a junior in high school, enjoying playing soccer and having barbecues with his friends.

He loved his two pet cats and dreamed of going to college or university to become a successful businessman.

However, those dreams were interrupted when Motassem was severely injured by an airstrike while he was outside with his friends in his neighborhood in the Gaza Strip, he told ABC News. Motassem is one of the more than 25,000 children who have been injured throughout the Israel-Hamas war, according to the United Nations.

Motassem lost most of his left arm in the attack, just a few weeks after the war broke out. His ring finger on his right hand was fully amputated and his middle finger was partially amputated, with attempts made to reconstruct it. He spent months between Gaza and Egypt before he was evacuated to the United States to receive more intensive medical care.

“Everything changed. I had no hope that I would get treatment,” he told ABC News in Arabic. “When I came to America … a future opened for me. I had hope.”

ABC News has been chronicling the journeys of some of the Palestinian children who have been injured over the course of the war.

‘I saw us get hit and then nothing’

Before the war, Motassem lived in the Az-Zawayda neighborhood of northern Gaza with his father, mother and seven siblings: one sister and six brothers.

He was attending school. He said he loved learning, and that geography was his favorite subject.

“I would get up and dressed. I wake up at six [o’clock] in the morning, go to school and learn,” he said. “Then I would go home. I find food ready. I sit with my family, and we eat together. Then I would do my homework, then play soccer with my friends.”

On Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas launched a surprise terrorist attack in southern Israel, which resulted in Israel declaring war on Hamas, Motassem said he was asleep.

“We all woke up and all I heard was the sounds of bombs,” he said. “Destruction. You could hear screams on the street. After Oct. 7, there was no joy. They stopped the world.”

Motassem said he and his family originally thought the conflict would be over within a week, but as the war continued, his neighborhood was hit hard. He said his family did not want to leave their home and decided to remain.He said he lived on the same block with his aunts, uncles and cousins, and the family tried to see each other whenever possible.

On the day of his injury, Oct. 28. 2023, Motasaem, then 16, said he was outside, near his house with his cousins and two of his friends when a bomb struck the area around him.

Motasaem does not remember a lot from the day of his injury and the days that followed, which he describes as a mix of memory loss and attempts to block the day from his memory. However, what he does remember is the initial blast.

“That day was a dark day. It wasn’t a normal day,” he said. “I saw us get hit, and after that I saw nothing.”

Motassem said he doesn’t remember anything until he woke up at Al-Aqsa Hospital that he learned he’d lost most of his left arm and two fingers on his right hand.

“I just woke up in the hospital and asked them, ‘What happened?'” he said. “They told me, ‘Your arm is gone.'”

Children wearing scars of the war

Children have been greatly impacted by the Israel-Hamas conflict, with UNICEF Communications Specialist Tess Ingram saying during a briefing last year that kids and teenagers are “disproportionately wearing the scars of the war in Gaza.”

During most of 2024, non-profit Save the Children estimated an average of 475 children were being hurt by explosive weapons each month, or 15 children a day, potentially leaving many with life-long disabilities.

In the same report, doctors from partner organization Medical Aid for Palestinians said children’s wounds are not healing due to increased levels of malnutrition, leading to amputations that would otherwise not be necessary. A senior United Nations official told the Security Council in October 2024 that Gaza is home to the largest number of amputee children in modern history.

Motassem said the pain he felt was “indescribable” and that he felt scared in the hospital. Due to the shortage of medication in Gaza, Motassem said he could only be given Actimol, a drug typically meant to relieve mild to moderate pain and to reduce fever.

Motassem said he had several operations on his arm and fingers and needed to have a chest tube placed on his left side after doctors found he had a hemothorax, which occurs when blood pools in the pleural space, or the space between the lungs and the chest wall.

He also developed a severe bacterial infection, but he said it’s unclear which infection he had.

The journey to get Motassem to the US

Motassem was medically evacuated to Egypt on New Year’s Eve in 2023 through a program run by the Gaza Ministry of Health, according to Tareq Hailat, director of global patient affairs at the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), the NGO responsible for eventually medically evacuating Motassem to the U.S.

“I was happy that I was leaving Gaza to get treatment abroad. When I got to Egypt, I didn’t find the treatment adequate,” Motassem said. “Once I got to the hospital, they kept doing tests on me. They told me I needed some surgeries because of the bone that is coming out [of my arm].”

Motassem’s surgeries in Egypt included a procedure to adjust the shoulder bone in his left arm and to separate fused bones in his right hand, Hailat said. Motassem also suffered from persistent wound infections and doctors removed shrapnel, medical gauze and wooden debris from his wounds.

Hailat said that injured patients evacuated to Egypt are taken to a government facility to be processed. However, because of the overcrowding, patients can go a long time without seeing a doctor or receiving medical care.

Motassem was still suffering from the bacterial infection and still required the chest tube while in Egypt.

“He had extreme pain, obviously, aside from phantom pain, he was having these neuromas of these nerves that were clogging up and creating the severe pain for him,” Hailat said.

A neuroma is a growth of nerve cells that can occur at the end of a severed nerve in an amputated limb. It can be very painful for an amputee.

Because of the pain, physicians were hesitant to give him a prosthetic arm because they were worried it would cause further nerve damage, according to Hailat.

He said medical records show Motassem was in the hospital for two months before it was determined he did not need medical care anymore. His father was able to secure a place to stay for Motassem and his brother, who was accompanying him, according to Hailat.

Hailat said PCRF saw a video on social media in late August 2024 of Motassem first arriving at the hospital in Egypt and, recognizing he needed advanced care, reached out to discuss medically evacuating him to the U.S.

“He was also extremely sad. He was always in his room. He did not leave his room at all to talk to anyone and, when I reached out to him, he actually thought it was a joke at first,” Hailat said. “I reached out and got his father’s number, and I contacted his father, and his father knew that it was serious. I sent them proof of the work that we’ve done.”

“And, at that point, I remember his father picking up the phone and calling me and saying to me, ‘Please make sure that this works, because this child is so severely depressed that if we give him this false hope, then it will shatter him,'” Hailat said. “And, at that moment, I knew that I wanted to make sure that things go right before first contacting Motassembelah and explicitly telling them that he’s going to leave.”

Motassem said he was at the house in Egypt with his brother when he first received the news that he was going to get treatment in the U.S. It had been hard to communicate with his family back home in Gaza due to poor internet connection and he was at a low point mentally.

“It was honestly a miracle from God,” he said. “They reached out to me and said, ‘We want to bring you to America.’ At that point, mentally, I was at a zero in Egypt. When they told me they were bringing me to America, I felt relief.”

“I want to thank Mr. Tareq for the way he treated me,” Motassem said. “When I first got in touch with him in Egypt, he brought the idea of hope back to me and that I will start my future.”

Once Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia agreed to accept Motassem’s case, Hailat worked to gather the appropriate visas and paperwork needed.

Due to the rules surrounding visas, Motassem would have to go by himself, which his father approved with the PCRF. After several weeks, Motassem became one of the 24 Gazan children PCRF has medically evacuated to the U.S. for treatment.

‘I was at peace’

Motassem was put on a direct flight from Cairo to New York City with another child being medically evacuated to the U.S. It was his first time on a plane, which he described as a “good feeling” but also “tiring.”

Motassem arrived in the U.S. at John F. Kennedy International Airport on his birthday, Oct. 19, 2024. He said he was held up in questioning for four hours and asked if he was a member of Hamas or a supporter of Hamas. Motassem said he doesn’t know any members of the organization.

Photos and videos from that day show a crowd of supporters cheering for Motassem as he arrives, carrying Palestinian flags and welcome signs.

“It was indescribable. I was so happy,” he said. “They were all nice people, and they all welcomed me, it was really exciting. … It was a beautiful day.”

Motassem spent the first day meeting the welcome group and exploring the streets of Philadelphia before his treatment was set to begin at Shriners Children’s Hospital.

When asked to describe what it was like walking around Philadelphia, he said, “I was at peace.”

When Motassem first met with a team at Shriners Children’s, doctors initially believed he just needed a prosthetic device and that his treatment would be finalized within three months, according to Hailat.

However, after the initial physical assessments, the team saw the neuromas and how they were causing severe pain for Motassem.

Doctors said they needed to perform nerve-bundling surgery to reduce his pain and so the prosthetic would fit him in a painless way, and he may need more corrective surgeries, according to Hailat. This entire process may take up to two years.

Because of this increased timeline, Hailat moved Motassem from the host family he was staying with in Delaware to a new home in Greenville, South Carolina.

He currently lives in a house with two teenage boys also from Gaza: Ayham, whose leg was injured during the war, and Ayham’s older brother, Ismail.

“I talk to them every day,” Motassem said. “Those two mean a lot to me. I love them.”

Hailat said it was important to ensure Motassem had people close to his own age with whom he could spend time, especially since no family members are in the U.S. with him.

“One of the things that I was fearful about … now that the medical care plan was going to be so long and we brought him here without a companion, I was scared that he will get very lonely and that he won’t form a community of support,” Hailat said. “And that’s why I brought him to [South Carolina], ensure that he’s with another patient from Gaza, and they are both experiencing very similar medical care plans and could share that that experience with each other, and it’s been absolutely phenomenal. It’s been amazing.”

Motassem said he tries to speak to his family back in Gaza as much as he can.

He said whenever he speaks to his mom, he tries to not talk about his injury and instead discuss future plans.

“I changed the subject. I don’t talk about the injury, anything to do with the injury,” he said. “I try to move past it. … My mother is my whole world. I don’t just miss her food; I miss life with her. She is everything.”

Motassem underwent nerve-bundling surgery on Jan. 24, 2025. In a video diary shared with ABC News after this surgery, he said the surgery went well.

Hopes of returning to Gaza

It’s unclear how long Motassem will need to stay in the U.S. to complete this treatment, but he hopes to return to Gaza one day. The recent ceasefire makes him hopeful.

He compared the day he learned about the ceasefire to the Muslim holiday of Eid, which is the end of the month-long fast of Ramadan.

“I was able to talk to [my family] three days after the ceasefire because there was no internet,” Motassem said. “I told my mom, ‘Congratulations.’ It was like the celebration of a groom’s wedding. The war is over.”

The deal between Israel and Hamas will take place in three different phases, each of which will last for six weeks, according to U.S. and Qatari officials.

Motassem said his family currently lives in a tent in Gaza because half of their house was destroyed over the course of his war. Two of his cousins were killed two days before the ceasefire, he says.

However, he has hope he can return to help rebuild.

“I miss everything in my room. I miss the comfort that I felt while in it,” he said. “This house I was born in and lived my entire life in, and it’s now gone. But 100% we will rebuild.”

He said once his treatment is completed in the U.S., he would like to get a degree in business and give back to the people of Gaza.

“I want to do everything for them, especially after the torture they suffered,” he said. “You don’t even see things like this in movies. The destruction you see in movies is not like what is happening. They deserve to have a right to live. The people of Gaza, the whole world knows who they are now.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LONDON) — The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence said on Monday that at least 30 North Korean soldiers were killed and wounded in weekend battles in Russia’s western Kursk region, prompting commanders to send reinforcements to frontline units.

“North Korean army units are being re-equipped after losses in assaults” around the villages of Plekhovo, Vorozhba and Martynovka in the Kursk region, the GUR wrote in a post to its official Telegram channel.

On Dec. 14 and 15, the GUR said, “units of the DPRK army suffered significant losses — at least 30 soldiers were killed and wounded,” using the acronym for the country’s official name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

At least three North Korean troops went missing around ​​the village of Kurilovka in Kursk, the post added.

“Due to losses, the assault groups are being replenished with fresh personnel, in particular from the 94th separate brigade of the DPRK army, to continue active combat operations in the area,” the GUR wrote.

Pyongyang is believed to have sent up to 12,000 troops to Russia in recent months, according to a November briefing by Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder. Their focus is believed to be the Kursk region of western Russia, where Ukrainian forces seized ground in a surprise August offensive.

Sources told ABC News in November that North Koreans may be among the approximately 50,000 troops being readied for a significant counteroffensive in Kursk.

Russian leaders have said they will not consider any peace talks while Kursk remains partially occupied, though officials in Kyiv frame their retention of Russian territory as important negotiating leverage.

North Korea’s provision of troops marked a new level of cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang. The two neighbors have drawn closer since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with North Korea already providing Moscow with artillery munitions and ballistic missiles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Kyiv has “preliminary data that the Russians have begun to use North Korean soldiers in their assaults — a significant number of them.”

“The Russians include them in combined units and use them in operations in the Kursk region,” Zelenskyy said in a statement posted to his Telegram page. “So far, only there. But we have information suggesting their use could extend to other parts of the frontline. There are also already noticeable losses in this category.”

“We will defend ourselves, including against these North Koreans,” Zelenskyy added. “And we will continue to act in coordination with all our partners to stop this war — to stop it decisively, with guaranteed peace.”

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