UPDATED 1:10 P.M.
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Hamas started handing over more Israeli hostages on Tuesday to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a Palestinian official said, on the fifth day of an extended six-day truce in the Gaza war.
The official gave no further details but the Israeli military, citing information from the ICRC, said 12 hostages were on their way to Israeli territory – 10 Israelis and two foreign nationals.
A spokesman for the foreign ministry of Qatar, which is mediating in the conflict, said the freed Israeli hostages included nine women and one minor.
According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club, a semi-official organisation, Israel in return is expected later on Tuesday to free 30 Palestinian detainees from Israeli jails – 15 women and 15 men.
If confirmed, the total number of hostages released by Hamas since the start of the truce last Friday would now stand at 81, including 60 Israelis – all women and children – and 21 foreign nationals, mostly Thai farmworkers.
The hostages were among some 240 people seized by Hamas gunmen during a rampage into southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which they killed 1,200 people.
Israel had released 150 prisoners prior to Tuesday’s moves.
The truce has brought Gaza its first respite after seven weeks of intensive Israeli bombardment prompted by the Hamas attack.
Gaza health authorities say more than 15,000 people have been confirmed killed in the Israeli onslaught on the Hamas-ruled territory, about 40% of them children, with many more dead feared to be lost under rubble.
The truce had been due to expire overnight into Tuesday but both sides agreed to extend the pause to allow for the release of more hostages held by Hamas and of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Israel has said the truce could be prolonged further, provided Hamas continues to free at least 10 Israeli hostages per day. But with fewer women and children still in captivity, keeping the guns quiet beyond Wednesday may require negotiating to free at least some Israeli men for the first time.
FURTHER EXTENSION?
On Tuesday, Israeli forces and Hamas fighters largely held their fire and both sides expressed their hope for further extensions of the pause in fighting that has reduced much of the Gaza Strip to a desolate moonscape.
Qatar hosted the spy chiefs from Israel’s Mossad and the United States’ CIA at a meeting to “build on the progress of the extended humanitarian pause agreement and to initiate further discussions about the next phase of a potential deal”, a source briefed on the visits told Reuters.
Although conditions on the ground in Gaza remained largely peaceful, Israel’s military said three explosive devices had been detonated on Tuesday afternoon near its troops in two different locations in the northern Gaza Strip, “violating the framework of the operational pause”.
In one location, gunmen opened fire on the soldiers who returned fire and that a number of soldiers were lightly injured. No further details were immediately available.
Earlier, a single column of black smoke could be seen rising above the obliterated wasteland of the northern Gaza war zone from across the fence in Israel, but for a fifth day there was no sign of jets in the sky or rumble of explosions.
Both sides also reported some Israeli tank fire in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City in the morning, but there were no reports of casualties. Israel said its troops had been approached and fired a warning shot.
Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, chief of Israel’s armed forces, told a press briefing that the military remained on alert in Gaza and was prepared to continue fighting.
“We are using the days of pause within the framework to learn, to bolster our readiness and to approve future operational plans,” he said.
BURYING THE DEAD
More than two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have lost their homes, with thousands of families sleeping rough in makeshift shelters with only the belongings they could carry.
Many are using the truce to return to abandoned or destroyed homes, like Abu Shamaleh, who was picking through the rubble of his flattened home in Khan Younis, looking for anything recoverable in the masonry.
He said 37 family members had been killed and that there was no machinery to excavate the body of a cousin still buried in the ruins.
“The truce is the time to lift the rubble and search for all the missing people and bury them. We honour the dead by burying them. What use is the truce if the bodies remain under the rubble?” he said.
Among Israeli hostages yet to be freed was 10-month-old baby Kfir Bibas, along with his brother Ariel, 4, and their parents Yarden and Shiri, bundled from a kibbutz by gunmen on Oct 7.
Yarden’s sister told reporters relatives had learned the family would not be in the group to go free on Tuesday. Israeli officials said they believed the family was being held by a militant group other than Hamas.
“Kfir… is a child who still doesn’t even know how to say ‘Mommy’,” Jimmy Miller, a cousin, told Channel 12 TV. “We in the family are not managing to function… The family hasn’t slept for a long, long time already – 51 days.”
When the war resumes, Israel has made clear it intends to press on with its assault from the northern half of Gaza into the south. U.S. officials said they have told their ally to be more careful protecting civilians as its forces press on.
Israel’s siege has led to the collapse of Gaza’s health care system, especially in the north where no hospitals remain functioning. The World Health Organization said more Gazans could soon be dying of disease than from bombing.
There were already a very high number of cases of infants suffering from diarrhoea, said WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris: “No medicines, no vaccination activities, no access to safe water and hygiene and no food.”
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Mohammed Salem and Roleen Tafakji in Gaza, Henriette Chacar and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff and Gareth Jones; Editing by Nick Macfie and Angus MacSwan)
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CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli forces and Hamas fighters abided by a truce for a fifth day on Tuesday, after a four-day ceasefire was extended at the last minute by at least 48 hours to let more hostages go free.
A single column of black smoke could be seen rising above the obliterated wasteland of the northern Gaza war zone from across the fence in Israel, but there was no sign of jets in the sky or rumble of explosions.
Both sides reported some Israeli tank fire in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City in the morning, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces said: “After suspects approached IDF troops, an IDF tank fired a warning shot.”
During the truce, Hamas fighters released 50 Israeli women and children as young as toddlers from among the 240 hostages they captured in southern Israel during a deadly rampage on Oct. 7. In return, Israel released 150 security detainees from its jails, all women and teenagers.
Hamas also released 19 foreign hostages, mainly Thai farmworkers, under separate deals parallel to the truce agreement.
Israel has said the truce could be prolonged as long as Hamas continues to release at least 10 hostages per day. But with fewer women and children left in captivity, keeping the guns quiet beyond Wednesday could require negotiating to free at least some Israeli men for the first time.
“We hope the occupation (Israel) abides (by the agreement) in the next two days because we are seeking a new agreement, besides women and children, whereby other categories that we have that we can swap,” Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya told Al Jazeera late on Monday.
Israeli security cabinet minister Gideon Saar told Army Radio that the two-day extension had been agreed under the terms of the original offer, and Israel remained willing to extend the truce further if more hostages were released.
“Immediately upon the completion of the hostage-recovery framework, the warfighting will be renewed,” he said.
Qatar, the main mediator of the truce in negotiations also involving Egypt and the United States, was now trying to secure a further extension based on Hamas releasing more hostages, its foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed Al-Ansari, said.
FIRST RESPITE
The truce brought the first respite to the Gaza Strip in seven weeks, during which Israel had bombed swathes of the territory, especially the north, including Gaza City, into a desolate moonscape. More aid was able to reach the territory, which had been under a total Israeli siege.
Israel has sworn to annihilate Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza, after its gunmen burst across the fence and went on a violent spree, killing around 1,200 people and seizing 240 captives.
Since then, Gaza health authorities deemed reliable by the United Nations say more than 15,000 people have been confirmed killed in Israel’s bombardment, around 40% of them children, with many more dead feared to be lost under rubble.
More than two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have lost their homes, trapped inside the enclave, with thousands of families sleeping rough in makeshift shelters with only the belongings they could carry.
When the war resumes, Israel has made clear it intends to press on with its assault from the northern half of Gaza into the south. U.S. officials said they have told their ally to be more careful about protecting civilians as its forces press on into areas where there are fewer opportunities to escape.
“You cannot have the sort of scale of displacement that took place in the north replicated in the south. It will be beyond disruptive, it will be beyond the capacity of any humanitarian support network,” one U.S. official said in a call with reporters. “It can’t happen.”
CLASHES OUTSIDE PRISON
Despite releasing 150 detainees under the truce, Israel has been arresting Palestinians far faster than it lets them go: according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, a semi-official organization, 3,290 Palestinians have been detained since Oct 7.
As Israel released the final 33 detainees under the original agreement on Monday night from its Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank, its forces clashed with some of the dozens of Palestinians waiting outside.
Some of the protesters waved the flags of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group. The Palestinian health ministry said one Palestinian was killed in the area. Israel had no immediate comment on the incident.
Israel added an additional 50 Palestinian women to its list of 300 detainees cleared for release under the truce, seen as a sign it was prepared to negotiate for more hostages to go free under further extensions.
Any release of male Israeli civilians would be expected to begin with fathers and husbands captured along with the children and women freed in recent days, like Ofer Calderon, whose daughters Sahar and Erez were freed on Monday.
“It is difficult to go from a state of endless anxiety about their fate to a state of relief and joy,” said Ido Dan, a relative, about the release of the two girls.
“This is an exciting and heart-filling moment but … it is the beginning of a difficult rehabilitation process for Sahar and Erez, who are still young and have been through an unbearable experience.”
Israel’s siege has led to the collapse of Gaza’s health care system, especially in the northern half of the territory where no hospitals remain functioning. The World Health Organization said more Gazans could soon be dying of disease than from bombing.
WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris, citing a U.N. report on the living conditions of displaced residents from northern Gaza, said there was already a very high number of cases of infants suffering from diarrhea: “No medicines, no vaccination activities, no access to safe water and hygiene and no food.”
(Reporting by Reuters bureau; Additional reporting by Rami Amichay in Tel Aviv and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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