Police say they are looking into an incident at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood on Friday that left one man “seriously injured by an unknown person.”

The search for the suspect is ongoing. Police said they believe the suspect acted alone, based on witness testimony.

Investigations are now under way and rescue workers are attending to several witnesses at the scene, police said in a statement posted on X.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Just what happened to Shiri Bibas and her two children after they were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, has become a source of torment for their family and millions of Israelis.

The two boys and their mother were not released from Gaza during the temporary truce in late November 2023, even though the deal agreed between Israel and Hamas called for all women and children to be set free.

The Bibas family clung to hope that they might still be alive even though Hamas announced on November 29, 2023, that they had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. The message from the military wing of Hamas merely said that it “announces the killing of 3 Zionist detainees as a result of a previous Zionist bombing of the Gaza Strip.” No evidence was produced, and the Israeli government said it was looking into the claim but never confirmed it.

It was unclear where in Gaza Shiri and her two sons, Kfir and Ariel, were being held at the time. Hamas did not produce evidence of their deaths. But a few days later, the group released a video of Shiri’s husband, Yarden Bibas, also a hostage at that time, in which he blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the death of his wife and two children.

Yarden appeared to be in extreme distress in the video and was very likely speaking under duress.

When the family was abducted from kibbutz Nir Oz, Yarden was taken separately from Shiri and their two children. Footage of his capture was released in April 2024, showing him being taken to Gaza on a motorcycle, his face bloodied.

Another hostage, Nili Margalit, who was held with Yarden Bibas, disclosed last year that she was with him when Hamas told him that his wife and two young children had been killed and ordered him to film the video. Later that day, November 30, she was released as part of a ceasefire deal that lasted a week.

It is clear that Shiri Bibas and her sons were still alive when taken into Gaza. In February last year, the Israeli military released a video clip from October 7 that was recovered from surveillance cameras in Khan Younis in southern Gaza and showed Shiri holding Ariel and Kfir, who were then 4 years and 9 months old respectively.

Upon releasing the video, the IDF said it did not have enough information to confirm whether they were still alive.

Nor is it entirely clear which group held Shiri Bibas and her sons, and at which time. Israel said the surveillance footage was taken from cameras at a site belonging to the Mujahideen Brigades, a militant faction allied to Hamas.

In November 2023, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichai Adraee, said Shiri and her sons were not always with the same group.

“Hamas treats them as if they were prey and sometimes hands them over to other terrorist organizations present in the Gaza Strip,” he said on X.

Adraee added they were “being held in the Khan Younis area by one of the Palestinian factions.”

But throughout last year, no more came to light of their fate. In June 2024, former cabinet minister Benny Gantz said he believed Israel knew the fate of Shiri and her sons but would not confirm the details.

In an interview with Kan 11, Gantz said: “I think yes,” when asked if Israel knew the fate of the Bibas family.

But neither the government nor the military ever confirmed what had happened to them.

Yarden Bibas was released earlier this month. Two weeks later, Hamas announced it would be releasing the bodies of Shiri and the children.

Now, Shiri remains unaccounted for. The body that was said to be hers is instead that of an unidentified “Gazan woman,” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Friday, Hamas spoke about “the possibility of an error or overlap in the bodies, which may have resulted from the occupation targeting and bombing the place where the family was with other Palestinians.”

In the crowded room, a local spiritual leader chanted verses in the Isan dialect of northeast Thailand while attendees knelt on woven mats.

Between their clasped hands ran a single white string as they performed a ceremony to welcome and protect the man who sat among them: Surasak Rumnao, who had been held hostage in Gaza for more than a year.

Dressed in a white shirt with closely cropped hair, Surasak sat beside his friend Pongsak Thaenna, who was also abducted near the Gaza border during Hamas’ deadly attack on October 7, 2023.

The two men had kept each other going throughout their 15 months in captivity; now, they smiled as family and friends took turns tying sacred white threads around their wrists to bestow blessings and ward off evil.

Of the 251 people taken hostage by Hamas militants on October 7, many were migrant workers from poor rural parts of Asia, who had gone to work in Israel’s agricultural, construction and health care sectors to send money back home. Among them were Surasak and Pongsak – two of the five Thai workers freed in January under a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

Like both men, many of the Thai abductees and victims were from Udon Thani, one of the country’s poorest provinces where jobs are hard to come by – pushing young people to overseas destinations or large cities like Bangkok for work.

At Surasak’s return party, the room was filled with elderly community members; most of their working-age children had left the small town.

After the ceremony, partygoers dug into a home-cooked feast of beef soup, fermented fish, sticky rice and minced meats, before celebrating late into the night with Thai liquors. But concerns also lingered for the remaining hostages in Gaza, including one Thai national.

“I want those who have been captured to be released quickly. We are trying to pray that they will be released, not just the Israelis but also the remaining Thai,” Surasak said.

“Having been in that situation, we understand the feeling of waiting for someone to come and help us.”

15 months in captivity

Like so many men and women from Thailand’s rural Isan region, Surasak, now 32, has been working away from home since he was a teenager – job-hunting in Bangkok after high school, then doing a stint at a factory in Taiwan.

Before the abduction, he had spent five years growing tomatoes, eggplants, figs and apples on Israeli farms.

The pay was much better than what he could earn back home, he said – to the point where he could fund his siblings’ education, give his mother money for daily spending, and support the family’s rice farm.

The impact of foreign wages is clear in Surasak’s village of Ban Dung, where new houses have popped up on dirt roads and cracked asphalt streets. His home, painted an eye-catching blue and turquoise, is one of the brightest, and has been expanded and renovated several times over the years.

But that steady flow of income and improvement came to a shuddering halt on October 7 as Hamas militants poured across the Gaza border and began their murder and kidnap spree across southern Israel.

After hearing word of the attacks, Surasak was trying to rush back to his employer’s farm when he was abducted. He and the other captured workers were tied up, put in the back of a pickup truck and told not to look around as the vehicle drove off.

The hostages were split up after they reached Gaza but Surasak and Pongsak stayed together, sleeping and eating side-by-side throughout the 15 months in captivity. Surasak said they weren’t mistreated, and were fed pita bread and cheese, with a portion of meat once a week.

Back in Ban Dung, his mother, Kammee, was anxiously contacting various Thai government agencies, who eventually confirmed that her son was one of the hostages and was still alive.

At first, Surasak would ask his captors when he would be released – and they would assure him, “Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in three days, next month,” he said. “After asking frequently, I stopped asking because I didn’t want to have expectations from them anymore.”

Instead, he tried to “have conversations and show them my sincerity, that I am not a soldier and have no involvement with them,” he said. He joked with his captors, even playing cards with them, using hand-drawn decks when no others were available, and sketching games of checkers.

Throughout it all, he kept track of the days by looking at the date on the guards’ wristwatches – though he had no other news about what was happening on the outside.

He and Pongsak would “encourage each other by saying that they wouldn’t do anything to us. They would release us eventually as negotiations were underway,” he said. “We trusted both the Israeli side and our Thai side, along with all the agencies that were doing their best to help us. We had to have faith in them.”

When the Hamas guards finally told Surasak in January that he would be released, he didn’t believe them, he said.

But before he knew it, they were in a car, then on a plane – then reuniting with tearful families at Bangkok airport in front of journalists and Thai officials.

Joyous return

Surasak’s return home was met with joy and relief, with the ceremony on Saturday meant to “call back” his spirit – a common practice after somebody has endured a hardship.

The community believes the loss of a person’s spirit or life force from their body can cause poor health or wellbeing – so on Saturday they offered gifts to entice the spirit back and restore Surasak’s happiness.

“Come back, good spirit,” the attendees chanted together. “Come back already!”

His mother said she had waited a long time for that day.

“I’m so happy and proud that my child has returned to be in our embrace once again,” she said. “My child is like the pillar of the family, and I wouldn’t just let that go. Seeing my child come back gives me so much hope, and I’m truly delighted.”

As he adjusts to being back home, Surasak says he has no plans to return to Israel. His family also wants him to stay in Thailand.

“I think I have enough. I will use the knowledge I’ve gained to improve life in our own hometown,” he said. “I want to live a life farming and cultivating the land of my ancestors.”

But his thoughts aren’t far from the remaining hostages in Gaza, and whether the ceasefire deal will hold long enough to get them all out.

In the last round, the deal looked on shaky ground after Hamas accused Israel of violating its commitments and said it would postpone the hostage releases – though it eventually went ahead after talks with mediators in Egypt and Qatar. Six Israeli hostages are scheduled to be released next on February 22; it’s not clear when the remaining Thai hostage will be freed.

“I hope that those who are still inside remain strong. They will eventually be able to get out,” Surasak said. “Sometimes the exchanges take time… We just have to wait.”

Israeli authorities say they are preparing to receive the remains of a body said to be that of hostage Shiri Bibas.

A coffin is currently in the hands of the Red Cross and on its way to Israel, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office confirmed on Friday.

A spokesperson for the Israeli police said they are preparing to escort the coffin to the Abu Kabir Forensics Center.

Hamas-run Al-Aqsa news reported on Friday that Hamas had handed over what it described as Bibas’ body to the Red Cross, citing Hamas leader Mahmoud Mardawi.

Bibas had been expected to be among the four hostage bodies returned by Hamas on Thursday.

After that handover, the Israeli military confirmed that Shiri’s young sons Kfir and Ariel and another captive Oded Lifshitz were among the bodies. However, during the identification process, it was determined that one of the bodies received was not that of Shiri Bibas, and did not match with any other Israeli hostage.

The Israeli Ministry of Health said that doctors and laboratories with the National Center for Forensic Medicine were preparing to identify the body with “speed and sensitivity.”

It urged the public to avoid spreading rumors and rely only on official sources, emphasizing the need to respect the family’s privacy during this “sensitive time.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

For days, they say they were locked inside a hotel in Panama, surrounded by tight security with limited contact with the outside world.

Nearly 300 migrants from Asia, all deported by the US, were held there by Panamanian authorities who agreed to take them in and eventually repatriate them. It’s part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, which it has pressured Latin American nations to help with.

But the conditions they have faced are distressing and may have violated their rights, the lawyers said.

Trapped in a hotel

The migrants started arriving in Panama City last week after being deported from the US. Some didn’t even know they were being flown to another country until they actually landed in Panama, according to attorney Ali Herischi, who said “they were told they’re going to Texas.”

The migrants were then sent to the Decapolis Hotel and forced to stay there for days without stepping foot outside.

Jenny Soto Fernández, a Panamanian lawyer who represents about 24 migrants from India and Iran, said her clients were living in isolation, fear and uncertainty.

She said a lot of them didn’t know their rights and weren’t given orders of removal upon being deported. They also face language barriers and are constantly worried about being repatriated, she added.

One of the migrants is Artemis Ghasemzadeh, an Iranian national who fled her country out of fear of persecution because of her conversion to Christianity.

“Under Islamic law, you cannot convert from Islam to any other religion,” said Herischi, who represents her.

Ghasemzadeh now worries her life will be at risk if she’s returned to Iran.

At the hotel, some migrants tried to voice their concerns by sending distress signals to journalists gathered outside. Standing in front of their windows, they held up pieces of paper with handwritten notes begging for support.

“Please help us,” one sign read. “We are not (safe) in our country.”

Another message was written with lipstick directly on the window. “HELP US,” it read in bold, red letters.

The migrants were not allowed to leave the hotel “for their own protection,” Panama’s Security Minister Frank Ábrego told a local radio program on Wednesday. He said they were held at the hotel, in part, because officials needed to “effectively verify who these people are who are arriving in our country.”

Soto argues that the migrants have the right to seek asylum because they’re fleeing persecution.

Soto said she tried at least four times to meet her clients at the hotel to sign legal documents required by authorities but was blocked by officials and never made it past the lobby.

“They actually were so emotional, screaming and said, ‘I want my lawyer! I want her. I want to talk to her. I don’t want to talk to these people here,’” Soto said.

She said that while they had comfortable beds and a place to stay, they were under “psychological pressure being closed in with security guards, immigration police, (and) officers there.”

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino on Thursday denied that authorities have violated any laws.

“These organizations are respectful of human rights. It’s false and I deny that we are mistreating them,” Mulino insisted.

Security Minister Ábrego said Wednesday that he hadn’t heard of any migrants requesting asylum there.

“But if they think they have the need, as any human being would, to request asylum, we have to pay attention to it and approve or disapprove it,” he added.

Bused to a migrant camp

The Panamanian government said that from Tuesday to Wednesday, about 97 migrants were taken out of the hotel and bused to a remote holding camp on the outskirts of the Darién Jungle. It happened after a New York Times report exposed the desperation of those stranded in the hotel in Panama City.

He said they described the site as tough and dirty, with limited access to medication and the internet.

One family has a sick child who could be heard crying in the background during a call between Herischi and Panamanian officials.

Sabalza said the family she represents was also taken to the camp.

She said Panamanian authorities had not yet provided them with guidelines on how the attorneys would be able to visit their clients at the camp or if they would need special permits to enter.

“It is urgent for us to have clarity about the mental and physical health status of our (clients),” she said.

When the migrants arrived at the gate on Wednesday morning, Herischi said the situation was so unorganized that the guards didn’t even have a list of the migrants’ names to identify them upon arrival. The guards later confiscated all the migrants’ cell phones.

He added that he plans to file legal action against Panama and the US in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and US federal court.

More than 100 migrants have asked not to be repatriated, Panamanian officials have said.

The IOM is expected to work with them and try to find a third country that will accept them, Security Minister Ábrego said.

Meanwhile, President Mulino said another group of migrants would be sent to the camp because “that’s where they can be more at ease.”

He added that 175 migrants who are still in the hotel have voluntarily agreed to return to their countries of origin. At least 13 have already been sent back.

Herischi said Panamanian authorities assured him they would not send Ghasemzadeh and other migrants back to Iran if they expressed fear of reprisals. Instead, officials said they would speak with the embassies of other countries to see if they can accept them.

Herischi concluded, “The only ‘luck’ that they got is that Panama has no relationship with Iran, so there is no Iranian embassy there.”

“That’s a good thing.”

Tren de Aragua, MS-13 and the Sinaloa cartel are among the two gangs and six drug cartels the US has officially designated as foreign terrorist organizations, fulfilling a long-standing goal from US President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Trump previously ordered the US to declare cartels terrorist groups in a January 20 executive order, but until US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s official announcement on Thursday, none of the cartels had been specifically named. During his first term, Trump had considered a similar maneuver but refrained at the request of then-Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

In an order published in the federal government’s Public Register, Rubio named two gangs: Tren de Aragua of Venezuela and MS-13 of El Salvador; and six Mexican drug cartels: Cartel de Sinaloa, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Carteles Unidos, Cartel del Noreste, Cartel del Golfo, and La Nueva Familia Michoacana.

They join the ranks of other groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the US, including ISIS, Boko Haram, and Hamas.

Here’s what you need to know about each of these groups:

Tren de Aragua

Tren de Aragua began as a prison gang in Venezuela, according to the US Treasury Department, with much of their criminal enterprise focused “on human smuggling and other illicit acts that target desperate migrants.”

TdA became a political talking point during the last presidential campaign, after police in Aurora, Colorado, said several suspects in a 2023 kidnapping there were members of the gang. As he stumped for the presidency, Trump held up Aurora and Tren de Aragua as an example of what he said were migration’s inevitable results, claiming that the gang had taken control of vast swathes of territory in Colorado. Aurora police, however, pushed back, saying that the gang’s presence in the city was “isolated.”

For Trump, “cracking down on Tren de Aragua is part and parcel of cracking down on the era of mass migration,” said Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

MS-13

MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a Salvadoran-American street gang and criminal organization, notorious for its brutality and its deep roots in the United States. MS-13 was a prominent theme of Trump’s first term, with the president often referring to the group as “violent animals.”

Unlike any of the other groups listed in Rubio’s order, MS-13 is technically native to the US. According to a history of MS-13 from InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in Latin America, a group of Salvadorans originally founded the group in 1980s Los Angeles.

In the following years, MS-13 began to grow and evolve as more Salvadorans arrived in the US, fleeing the civil war back home. Though the group began as a Salvadoran gang, according to a 2008 FBI threat assessment, its ranks have opened to others from Latin America, including Hondurans and Guatemalans. When US authorities began deporting members of MS-13 back to the region in the 1990s, it caused an explosion of gang activity in El Salvador and neighboring countries.

By 2015, El Salvador was the murder capital of the Western Hemisphere. Ten years later, however, the murder rate has plummeted. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has focused much of his time in office on curbing violence from gangs like MS-13, arresting nearly 1% of the country’s population and throwing thousands of gang members in prison.

MS-13’s addition to the designation list is a “curveball,” said Freeman.

“It’s a bit weird,” Freeman pointed out. “One of the main countries it drew its strength from was El Salvador. It’s really been dismantled there.”

Cartel de Sinaloa

The Cartel de Sinaloa or the Sinaloa Cartel is closely associated with its former leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, known for his numerous prison escapes and immortalized in rapper Gucci Mane’s 2012 single “El Chapo.” After the US extradited Guzmán from Mexico in 2017 and convicted him on 10 counts of federal drug-related crimes two years later, his sons – El Chapitos – partly took control of the group. The DEA alleged in a 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment that the Sinaloa Cartel operates with four different components cooperating without a single, formal leader.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Sinaloa Cartel’s international presence is unmatched by any other Mexican criminal group, with a diverse empire of extortion rackets, weapons trading, prostitution and oil theft alongside their drug business. In 2023, former US Attorney General Merrick Garland alleged the Sinaloa Cartel operates the “largest, most violent, and most prolific fentanyl trafficking operation in the world.” In the same press release, the Justice Department alleged that the group is “largely responsible” for the manufacturing and importing of fentanyl for distribution in the US.

Cartel del Golfo

Journalist Ioan Grillo writes in his authoritative book “El Narco” that the Gulf Cartel got its start during the Prohibition era, smuggling heroin and whiskey over the border into the US. But it wasn’t until the 1990s and 2000s that CDG reached prominence under the stewardship of Osiel Cardenas Guillen.

Cardenas, whom Grillo describes as a “balding former car thief,” eventually enticed members of the Mexican Special Forces to join his syndicate as enforcers. Their unit eventually (and violently) branched off into Los Zetas Cartel in 2010, according to a 2022 report from the Congressional Research Service. Cardenas, meanwhile, was arrested and extradited to the US in 2007, where he was imprisoned. In 2024, the US handed him over to Mexico so he could stand trial on numerous charges there.

Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, is one of the “most powerful and ruthless criminal organizations” inside Mexico, according to the DEA’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment.

CJNG is led by Nemesio Oseguero Cervantes, a former police officer better known as El Mencho, according to InSight Crime. A Justice Department indictment of Oseguero says his organization is active in the Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima, and Veracruz, and has presences elsewhere.

The DEA alleges that the cartel “operates under a franchise business model,” allowing CJNG to rapidly expand and control significant swathes of narcotrafficking routes. Heavily involved in the production and trafficking of methamphetamine and fentanyl, the DEA claims that CJNG has deep connections with suppliers for chemical precursors in China. Jalisco exercises control over various maritime ports to import these chemical products and has an extensive network of smuggling routes.

Cárteles Unidos

In its latest incarnation, Cárteles Unidos formed in 2019 as an alliance of the Cartel of Tepalcatepec, Los Viagras, and other groups, with the shared goal of combatting CJNG and expelling them from Michoacán, according to InSight Crime.

Before disbanding, a prior version of the group formed in 2010 to stop the advance of the Zetas into Michoacán and Jalisco, InSight reports. It was composed of members from many organizations from the Sinaloa Cartel, the Knights Templar cartel, Milenio Cartel, and the Familia Michoacana.

The broader organization is led by Juan José Farías Álvarez, known as “El Abuelo,” the former leader of the self-defense group that fought the Knights Templar in Tierra Caliente. Carteles Unidos also is involved in growing avocados, one of Mexico’s chief exports. The cartel devotes significant energy to extorting avocado producers, and one recent report found that 80% of the avocado orchards in Michoacan were established illegally.

Cartel del Noreste

The Cartel del Noreste (CDN) operates primarily in northeast Mexico along the US border. The cartel emerged when Los Zetas – itself a spinoff of the Gulf Cartel – splintered after a series of high-profile leadership losses, according to InSight Crime.

A 2024 Justice Department indictment against several members of the organization accused CDN and Los Zetas of “using terroristic violence to control large swaths of Northern Mexico, including along the border between Mexico and the United States.”

In November 2024, Homeland Security said that the group was involved in smuggling migrants into the US, claiming that “in recent years it has added human smuggling to its list of illicit money-making operations, with Facebook and social media becoming invaluable tools to facilitate its new venture.”

La Nueva Familia Michoacana

According to the US Treasury, La Nueva Familia Michoacana is led by José Alfredo and Johnny Hurtado Olascoaga with a presence in Michoacán, Guerrero, and the state of Mexico. The US State Department has alleged that the organization is involved in “migrant smuggling” into the US, alongside the fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine trades.

The group’s founder, Nazario “El Chayo” Moreno, was known for preaching Bible verses and self-help phrases to the members of his organization, according to the Mexican attorney general’s office. Moreno famously “died” twice: Mexican authorities initially claimed they killed him in 2010 but couldn’t produce an image of his dead body. The official story drew suspicion up through 2014, when Mexico’s Public Security System said he was shot and killed during a raid, acknowledging their previous announcement was incorrect.