Hamas announces handover of hostages to Israel after ceasefire is established

Hamas announces handover of hostages to Israel after ceasefire is established



After weeks of fighting, Hamas announced a temporary truce in the Gaza Strip and the handover of a group of hostages captured in the deadliest attack in Israel’s history on Friday.

“Half an hour ago, the prisoners were handed over to the Red Cross at the Rafah crossing and the Red Cross will take them to the Egyptians,” a source close to Hamas told AFP.

A Hamas military wing official confirmed the handover, adding: “This is the first group under the agreement.”

The first group of 13 women and child hostages was scheduled to return to Israel on Friday, under an agreement that followed weeks of talks involving Israel, Palestinian militants, Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

Israel plans to release three times as many Palestinian prisoners (women and teenage boys) from Israeli prisons.

Thai Prime Minister Sureta Thavisin announced on Friday that more than a dozen Thai hostages kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7 raid on Israel were also freed.

Photos released by the Israeli military showed bright pink and blue headphones on the helicopter seats for freed hostages to use, as well as toys and teddy bears waiting at reception centers where they were taken.

At least 50 hostages were freed during the four-day ceasefire, with an estimated 190 expected to be handed over to Palestinian militants.

In exchange, 150 Palestinian prisoners will be released.

Hamas breached Gaza’s militarized border with Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 240 Israeli and foreign hostages, according to Israeli officials.

– ‘Go home’ –

The pause in fighting sparked a mass movement of thousands of Gazans who had taken refuge in schools and hospitals from relentless Israeli shelling that began after an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants.

“I’m going home,” Omar Jibrin, 16, told AFP after leaving a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip where he and his eight family members had evacuated.

In Khan Yunis, south of Gaza, where many Palestinians have fled, a cacophony of car horns and ambulance sirens has replaced the sounds of war.

For Khalid al-Halabi, the ceasefire is “a chance to breathe” after nearly seven weeks of war.

Halabi is from Gaza City in the north, where much of the city has been reduced to rubble, although he had sought refuge in Rafah.

The Hamas government in Gaza said about 15,000 people had been killed in Israeli retaliatory airstrikes, artillery and naval strikes that paralleled the ground attack.

Gazans are struggling to survive due to lack of water and other necessities. Immediately after the truce began at 7 a.m., trucks carrying more aid, including fuel, gas and food, began moving into Gaza from the Egyptian border in Rafah.

Jens Ralke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA, said in Geneva that he hoped the suspension would “lead to a long-term humanitarian ceasefire in the interests of the people of Gaza, Israel and the rest of the world.” .

He reiterated the need for access to all of Gaza, especially the north, where “the damage and humanitarian needs are greatest.”

The United Nations estimates that 1.7 million of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million have been displaced by the fighting.

Thousands of people are now trying to return home.

In Khan Yunis, they crowded the streets as they returned home from temporary shelters, loading their belongings into wheelbarrows, tying them to the roofs of cars, and slinging bags over their shoulders.

Israeli warplanes have dropped leaflets warning people that the war is not over and that it is “extremely dangerous” to return to the north, the center of Israel’s military operations.

The ceasefire was also an opportunity for some Palestinians to return to Gaza through the Rafah border.

Several gunshots were heard during the morning and black smoke periodically billowed over northern Gaza, but the ceasefire appeared to hold in place into the afternoon, AFPTV’s live cameras showed.

Calm also returned further north on the Lebanon-Israel border after periodic deadly gun battles, mainly between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. The Lebanese movement, like Hamas, receives support from Iran.

Source: guardian.ng

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *