Sixteen hostages were released on Wednesday by Hamas on the final day of a two-day extension of a truce in the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian militants.
A Red Cross vehicle, as part of a convoy carrying hostages abducted by Hamas militants during the October 7 attack on Israel, arrives at the Rafah border, amid a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in the southern Gaza Strip, November 29, 2023. Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Sixteen hostages were released on Wednesday by Hamas on the final day of a two-day extension of a truce in the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian militants.
The group of civilians included Israelis, dual nationals and Thai citizens, officials said.
As part of an exchange deal under the truce, Israel will release 30 Palestinian prisoners - 16 minors and 14 women on Wednesday night, Qatar foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said in a statement.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier identified two Russian-Israeli women freed on Wednesday night as Yelena Trupanov, 50, and Irena Tati, 73. Video from Hamas' armed wing showed the women being handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross and driven out of the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, in a clash in the West Bank city of Jenin between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians, two young males and two militants were killed, Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported.
An 8-year-old boy, a 15-year-old male and two senior militant commanders died, the report said. The Israeli military said people threw explosive devices at Israeli soldiers, who responded with live fire.
The handover of hostages was overshadowed by an unconfirmed claim by Hamas, the largest militant group in Gaza, that a family of Israeli hostages including the youngest hostage, baby Kfir Bibas, had been killed during earlier Israeli bombardment.
Israeli officials said they were checking the Hamas report about the Bibas family, a very emotive issue in Israel where the family - 10-month-old Kfir, his 4-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri - is among the most high-profile hostages.
Relatives of the Bibas family said they had been informed of the Hamas report. "We are waiting for the information to be confirmed and hopefully refuted by military officials," a statement from the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum said.
The two hostages freed were among some 240 people seized by Hamas gunmen during a rampage into southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed. Israel's bombardment of Gaza in retaliation has killed more than 15,000 Gazans, according to health authorities in the Palestinian enclave.
TRUCE EXTENSION TALKS
Two Palestinian officials told Reuters that talks were continuing over a possible extension of the truce, which is scheduled to expire early on Thursday, but no agreement had yet been reached.
Israel's Channel 12 reported that Netanyahu would convene a security meeting on Wednesday night.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Lebanon, was cited by Hamas-affiliated media as saying attempts to extend the truce "have not yet matured, and what we've been presented with so far is not worth studying."
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Brussels he would work with the Israelis during a trip there in the coming days to see if the temporary ceasefire could be extended.
An Israeli official said earlier it would be impossible to extend the ceasefire without a commitment to release all women and children among the hostages. The official said Israel believed that militants were still holding enough women and children to prolong the truce by two to three days.
A Palestinian official said negotiators were hammering out whether Israeli men would be released on different terms than the exchange of three Palestinian detainees for each Israeli hostage that has applied to the women and children.
Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy said Israel would consider any serious proposal.
So far Gaza militants have freed more than 70 Israeli women and children under the deal that secured the war's first truce. Other foreigners, mainly Thai farm workers, were also freed under separate parallel deals. Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara cried when he met Thais released to Israel by Hamas after seven weeks of captivity and said he hoped for freedom soon for the remaining 13 Thai hostages.
In return, Israel has released 180 Palestinian security detainees, all women and teenagers.
NETANYAHU VOWS TO CONTINUE WAR
The initial four-day truce was extended by 48 hours from Tuesday, and Israel says it would be willing to prolong it for as long as Hamas frees 10 hostages a day. But with fewer women and children held, that could mean agreeing to terms governing the release of at least some Israeli men for the first time.
Israel's Netanyahu repeated earlier statements to pursue the war to destroy Hamas once the ceasefire lapses.
"There is no way we are not going back to fighting until the end. This is my policy, the entire cabinet stands behind it, the entire government stands behind it, the soldiers stand behind it, the people stand behind it - this is exactly what we will do," Netanyahu said.
The truce has brought the first respite in the bombardment of Gaza with much of the coastal territory of 2.3 million having been reduced to wasteland.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday the Gaza Strip was in the midst of an "epic humanitarian catastrophe" and urged the world not to look away.
"Intense negotiations are taking place to prolong the truce – which we strongly welcome - but we believe we need a true humanitarian ceasefire," he told the U.N. Security Council.
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, Steve Holland on Air Force One, Katharine Jackson in Washington and Reuters bureaux Writing by Peter Graff, William Maclean and Grant McCool Editing by Nick Macfie, Gareth Jones and Cynthia Osterman
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