Envoys push for Gaza truce before Ramadan starts next week

Palestinians stand amid the rubble of houses destroyed by Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 6, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Updated 07 March 2024
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Envoys push for Gaza truce before Ramadan starts next week

  • As negotiators in Egypt sought to overcome tough stumbling blocks, deadly fighting again rocked Gaza where the UN warns famine looms

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Envoys pushed on with efforts for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal in Cairo talks Wednesday, hoping to halt nearly five months of fighting with days to go before Ramadan.
US President Joe Biden had urged Hamas to accept a ceasefire plan with Israel before the Muslim fasting month begins, which could be as early as Sunday depending on the sighting of the crescent moon.
As negotiators in Egypt sought to overcome tough stumbling blocks, deadly fighting again rocked Gaza where the UN warns famine looms and desperate crowds have stopped and looted food aid trucks.
Gazans were waiting to collect bags of flour outside an office of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in Rafah, now home to nearly 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them displaced by the war.
“The flour they provide is not enough,” said displaced man Muhammad Abu Odeh. “They do not provide us with sugar or anything else except flour.”
In Khan Yunis, dozens of people went to inspect their homes before streaming out along streets lined by bombed-out buildings carrying what belongings they could recover after Israeli forces pulled out of the city center, an AFP correspondent said.
The army has yet to respond to an AFP request to confirm such a withdrawal.
Biden on Tuesday called on Hamas to accept the truce plan brokered by US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, saying “it’s in the hands of Hamas right now.”
The proposed deal would pause fighting for “at least six weeks,” see the “release of sick, wounded, elderly and women hostages” and allow for “a surge of humanitarian assistance,” the White House said.
One known sticking point centers on an Israeli demand for Hamas to provide a list of about 100 hostages believed to still be alive — a task Hamas says it is unable to complete while bombing continues.
The Palestinian Islamist group said in a statement it had “shown the required flexibility with the aim of reaching an agreement,” insisting on a complete halt to the fighting.
In past years, violence has flared during Ramadan in annexed east Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound — Islam’s third-holiest site and Judaism’s most sacred, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Hamas has urged Muslims to flock there in great numbers, as they do every year, while some Israeli far-right politicians have urged restrictions.
Israel has said Muslims will initially be allowed into the site “in similar numbers” as in recent years, but that this will be followed by a weekly “situation assessment.”
The war began after Hamas launched the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took around 250 hostages, and Israel believes 99 of them remain alive in Gaza and that 31 have died.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 30,717 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to push on with the campaign to destroy Hamas, before or after any truce deal.
The Israeli army said Wednesday it lost one more soldier in Gaza, taking the total killed to 247 since ground operations began on October 27.
While the war has reduced vast stretches of Gaza to a wasteland of gutted buildings and rubble, the siege has sparked a humanitarian disaster for its 2.4 million people.
Hunger has reached “catastrophic levels” in the north, the UN World Food Programme has warned.
“Children are dying of hunger-related diseases and suffering severe levels of malnutrition,” it said, with the latest victim according to the health ministry being a 15-year-old girl who died at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
Health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said “the famine in northern Gaza has reached lethal levels” and could claim thousands of lives unless Gaza receives more aid and medical supplies.
South Africa on Wednesday petitioned the International Court of Justice to impose more emergency measures against Israel over what it described as the “widespread starvation” occurring in Gaza as a result of its offensive.
It is the second time Pretoria has asked the court for additional measures — its first request in February was denied.
British foreign minister David Cameron on Wednesday pressed Israel to increase the flow of aid into Gaza.
“We are still not seeing improvements on the ground. This must change,” Cameron said he told Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz during a meeting.
More than 100 people were reported killed in bloody chaos last week when thousands of people swarmed aid trucks. Gaza officials blamed the deaths on Israeli gunfire, while the army insisted most were trampled or run over.
Another truck convoy was diverted by Israeli troops within Gaza late Tuesday and then stopped by “a large crowd of desperate people who looted the food,” said the WFP.
Jordanian, US and other planes have repeatedly airdropped food into Gaza.
But WFP deputy chief Carl Skau said “airdrops are a last resort and will not avert famine.”
Israel, which has recalled its UN envoy in a sign of growing tensions, said the Security Council should “designate Hamas immediately as a terrorist organization” and impose sanctions on it.
Government spokesman Eylon Levy also demanded “a fierce condemnation” of sexual violence committed during the Hamas attack, after a UN report found “reasonable grounds to believe” there had been instances of rape on October 7.


‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza

Updated 15 February 2025
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‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza

  • All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border
  • They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel

TEL AVIV: Holding up signs reading “sorry and welcome back” and “complete the ceasefire,” hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” on Saturday to watch Hamas release three Israeli hostages from Gaza.
In smaller groups, friends and relatives of the released men — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov, 29, and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn, 46 — shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones, who were made to address a crowd in Gaza from a stage alongside rifle-wielding militants.
All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which sparked the war.
Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, who gave birth to the couple’s third daughter two months after her husband was seized, was waiting for him at an army base in southern Israel.
“My breath has returned. He looks so handsome,” she said following his release in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.
Other relatives of Dekel-Chen said they were relieved to see him alive.
“I am excited, and I see that he looks OK, and I want to hug him,” his mother-in-law told Kan, wiping away tears.
Dekel-Chen’s sister-in-law said: “Thank God that everything is OK and they were on their feet.”
They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel, where some residents of Nir Oz have moved to since the attack.
In Kfar Saba, in central Israel, a friend of the Horn family, Ronnie Milo, told AFP that she was experiencing “unimaginable joy” on seeing him return alive.
Ronli Nissim, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group, said: “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and also very bittersweet.”
“Every time someone comes back... we are just a jumble of emotions,” she said.
“But then we’re thinking about everyone who’s left behind, and we know that they are mistreated, we know that they’re in hell, and they’re just waiting to be released.”
So far under the Gaza truce, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody.
The 42-day first phase of the truce stipulates the release of a total of 33 hostages, including eight Israel says are dead, in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
Out of the 251 people abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, 70 remain in Gaza, with half of them dead according to the Israeli military.
In Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Trupanov’s friends and family clapped, cheered and cried as they watched the 29-year-old, who had been held by Hamas’s ally Islamic Jihad, step out of a car in Gaza.
In a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Trupanov’s family said they were grateful to see him return.
“Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” said the statement, adding that they did not know if Trupanov was “aware that his father, Vitaly, was murdered on October 7.”
“This knowledge — or lack thereof — will completely transform his homecoming from a day of great joy to one of deep mourning for his beloved father,” they said.


Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media

Updated 15 February 2025
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Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media

  • Moscow welcomed the freeing of Alexander Trufanov and expresses its gratitude to Hamas

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Saturday said it was grateful to Palestinian militant group Hamas for freeing a Russian-Israeli hostage from Gaza in another prisoner exchange with Israel.
“Moscow welcomes the freeing of Alexander Trufanov (identified by Israel as Sasha Trupanov) and expresses its gratitude to the Hamas leadership for taking this decision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.


Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south

Updated 15 February 2025
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Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south

  • An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike targeting the outskirts of Ainata, said NNA

BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said an Israeli drone struck the country’s south on Saturday, without reporting casualties, days before a deadline in a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike” targeting the outskirts of the town of Ainata, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said, adding that “nobody was hurt” and that “drones and surveillance aircraft are still flying over the area at low altitude.”


Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange

Updated 15 February 2025
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Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange

  • Exchange of hostages and prisoners maintains ceasefire, with buses carrying freed Palestinians arriving to cheering crowds in Ramallah, Gaza
  • The swap takes place after negotiations, with both sides focusing on the next phase to return the remaining hostages and end the war

KHAN YOUNIS:  Hamas released Israeli hostages Iair Horn, Sagui Dekel Chen and Sasha (Alexander) Troufanov in Gaza on Saturday and Israel freed some 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange, after mediators helped avert a collapse of the fragile ceasefire.
The three Israelis were led onto a stage with Palestinian Hamas militants armed with automatic rifles standing on each side of them at the site in Khan Younis, live footage showed, before they were taken back into Israel by Israeli forces.
Shortly afterwards, buses carrying freed Palestinian prisoners and detainees departed Israel’s Ofer jail in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The first bus arrived in Ramallah to a cheering crowd, some waving Palestinian flags.

Freed Palestinian prisoners gesture from a bus after being released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Reuters)

“We didn’t expect to be freed, but God is great, God set us free,” said Musa Nawarwa, 70, from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, who was serving two life terms for killings of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
Buses carrying some of the hundreds of Palestinian freed prisoners and detainees, some flashing victory signs as they hung from the windows, arrived later at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

A few were returning to an enclave they have not seen for years, before it was blasted into rubble by Israeli airstrikes and shelling in 15 months of war. But most were rounded up after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The ceasefire’s second phase would usher in negotiations to return the remaining living hostages among the 251 seized that day, and complete an Israeli military withdrawal before a final end to the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Israeli hostages Iair Horn, 46, left, Sagui Dekel Chen, 36, center left, and Alexander Troufanov, 29, right, are escorted by Hamas on a stage before being handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)

Argentina-born Iair Horn, 46, was taken captive together with his younger brother Eitan. Horn appeared to have lost considerable weight in captivity.
“Now, we can breathe a little. Our Iair is home after surviving hell in Gaza. Now, we need to bring Eitan back so our family can truly breathe,” Horn’s family said in a statement.
The swap of the three Israelis for the 369 Palestinians allayed growing alarm that the ceasefire agreement could unravel before the end of the 42-day first stage of the truce pact in effect since January 19.
In what has become known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, people broke into cheers and tears after hearing the Red Cross was on its way to deliver the three to Israeli military forces.
Dekel Chen, a US-Israeli, Troufanov, a Russian Israeli, and Horn along with his brother Eitan were seized in Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities near Gaza’s border that were overrun by Hamas gunmen on October 7, 2023.
Some of the dozens of masked Islamist Hamas fighters deployed at the handover site carried rifles seized from the Israeli military during the October attack, Hamas sources said.

On the handover stage in Khan Younis, the hostages were made to give short statements in Hebrew and militants presented Horn with an hourglass and photo of another Israeli hostage still in Gaza and his mother, reading “time is running out (for the hostages still in Gaza).”
Troufanov was abducted with his mother, grandmother and girlfriend — all of whom were released during a brief November 2023 pause in hostilities. His father was killed in the attack on Nir Oz, one of the worst-hit communities, where one in four people either died or were taken hostage.

A freed Palestinian prisoner is hugged by a boy after being released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Reuters)

On October 7, Dekel Chen, 36, left his pregnant wife and two little daughters in the family safe room to go out and fight gunmen rampaging through the kibbutz.
He embraced his tearful wife Avital tightly and said “perfect” with a big smile when she told him the name of their baby daughter, who he has not yet seen, was Shahar Mazal, Hebrew for “dawn” and “luck,” in a video released by the military.
Nineteen Israeli and five Thai hostages have been released so far, with 73 still in captivity, around half of whom have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Prospects for the ceasefire surviving have been shaken by US President Donald Trump’s call for Palestinians to be resettled permanently out of Gaza, and for the tiny enclave to be turned over to the US to be redeveloped as a seaside resort. That idea has been rejected out of hand by Palestinian groups, Arab states and Western allies of Washington.


Israel army chief says ‘preparing offensive plans’ amid efforts to secure hostages’ release

Updated 15 February 2025
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Israel army chief says ‘preparing offensive plans’ amid efforts to secure hostages’ release

  • Lt. General Halevi said they are making immense efforts to bring the captives back

JERUSALEM: Israel’s army chief said on Saturday the military was “preparing offensive plans” even as efforts to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza continue.
Following the latest prisoner-hostage swap under a truce deal with Hamas militants, Lt. General Herzi Halevi said, referring to the captives who remain in Gaza: “We are making immense efforts to bring them back while simultaneously preparing offensive plans.”