Israel has received the list of the third batch of hostages to be released by Hamas on Sunday, The Times of Israel reported.
The state public broadcaster said that Israel has begun notifying the families of the hostages who are slated to be handed over by Hamas as part of a temporary truce. Qatar, which has been playing the role of a mediator between Israel and Hamas, gave the list to Israel.
This will be the third day of a four-day truce, which Qatar said it hoped to be extended further with the release of more hostages.
On Saturday night, in the second batch of hostages, as many as 17 hostages were released by Hamas. These included 13 Israelis and four Thai nationals. The release came after a brief delay in the temporary truce by Hamas over the passage of humanitarian aid to Gaza (also part of the truce), which was overcome by the intervention of Qatar and Egypt.
A total of 50 hostages are to be exchanged for 150 Palestinian prisoners over the course of four days.
Meanwhile, Israel has freed 39 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages.
Here are the latest developments in the Israel Hamas war
Among the 13 Israelis released by Hamas on Sunday, six were women and seven were children and teenagers, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Television footage showed vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) arriving at the Rafah border crossing late on Saturday night as hostages prepared to leave Gaza. They were then handed over to the Red Cross teams by Hamas.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office later released the first official video of the 13 hostages upon their arrival to the Hatzerim Air Force Base in Israel.
A video of a 9-year-old Irish-Israeli girl, whose father believed her to be dead for weeks, reuniting with him was shared by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The video showed the girl in a pink sweater running into the arms of her father, with both delighted at the reunion after the girl was in Hamas’s captivity for more than a month.
Emily was among the seven children and teenagers of the 13 Israeli hostages released by Hamas in the second batch of swaps with Palestinian prisoners as part of the ongoing temporary truce.
Television footage showed Palestinian prisoners released by Israel being greeted by large crowds and “God is great” chants as a Red Cross bus carrying them arrived in Al Bireh in the West Bank. Several young men stood on the roof of the vehicle and many in the crowd held Hamas’s flags and chanted pro-Hamas slogans.
One of the released Palestinians was Nurhan Awad, who received a hero’s welcome by hundreds of people at Jerusalem’s Qalandia refugee camp. She was sentenced to 13 1/2 years in jail by Israel in 2016 when as a 17-year-old, she attempted to stab an Israeli soldier with a pair of scissors.
Israa Jabis, 38, was one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners released by Israel. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being convicted of detonating a gas cylinder in her car at a checkpoint in 2015, injuring a police officer. Journalists gathered outside her home in Jerusalem, but Israeli troops evicted them.
US President Joe Biden on Saturday spoke to Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani, after a delay in the temporary truce, White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. The leaders discussed the “hurdles” in the truce.
Meanwhile, Israel has said the truce can be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed — something Biden said he hoped would occur.
The short brief in the temporary truce came on Saturday after Hamas’s armed wing, Al Qassam Brigades, announced the same. The group said the delay would be in place until Israel was committed to allowing trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter northern Gaza.
Israel responded strongly to the delay, giving Hamas a deadline of Saturday midnight to release the second batch of hostages and conveying that failure to adhere to it would trigger the resumption of the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. Soon after, Qatar said that Hamas had confirmed to release the second batch of hostages on Saturday night.