Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages

Update People gather around a vehicle of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Saraya Square in Gaza City on Jan. 19. The Israeli military said the Red Cross had confirmed the handover of three hostages. (AFP)
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People gather around a vehicle of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Saraya Square in Gaza City on Jan. 19. The Israeli military said the Red Cross had confirmed the handover of three hostages. (AFP)
Update Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages
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A resident waves the Palestinian flag as displaced Palestinians return to Rafah on Jan. 19, 2025. (AP)
Update Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages
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Two women smile as they ride in a car along a street in Gaza City on Jan. 19, 2025. (AFP)
Update Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages
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Men ride in a car adorned with a Palestinian flag along a street in Gaza City on Jan. 19, 2025. (AFP)
Update Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages
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Displaced Palestinians have started to return to Rafah on Jan. 19, 2025 amid a delay in the long-awaited ceasefire in the conflict. (AFP)
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Updated 19 January 2025
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Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages

Gazans cheer as ceasefire takes hold, Hamas frees first hostages
  • Palestinians rush to see what remained of their homes after ceasefire takes hold
  • Three Israeli women hostages handed over to Israel by Hamas via the Red Cross

GAZA/CAIRO/JERUSALEM: Palestinians burst into the streets to celebrate and return to the rubble of their bombed-out homes on Sunday, and Hamas released the first three hostages under a ceasefire deal that halted fighting in Gaza.
Armed Hamas fighters drove through the southern city of Khan Younis with crowds cheering and chanting. In the north of the territory, bombed into oblivion in the war’s most intense fighting, people picked their way on narrow roads through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal.
“I feel like at last I found some water to drink after being lost in the desert for 15 months,” Aya, a displaced woman from Gaza City who has been sheltering in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip for over a year, said after the fighting stopped. “I feel alive again.”
In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Israelis in a square outside the defense headquarters watched the hostage release on a giant screen. The crowd cheered, embraced and wept as three female hostages could be seen exiting a vehicle in Gaza surrounded by armed Hamas men.
The hostages got into vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross as the crowd of fighters chanted the name of the armed wing of Hamas.
Soon after, the Israeli military said the hostages, identified by the prime minister’s office as Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari, had reached Israeli territory. An Israeli official told Reuters the Red Cross said they were in good health.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, buses were awaiting the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention. Hamas said the first group to be freed in exchange for the hostages includes 69 women and 21 teenage boys.
The first phase of the truce in the 15-month-old war between Israel and Hamas took effect following a three-hour delay during which Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip.
That last-minute Israeli blitz killed 13 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. Israel blamed Hamas for being late to deliver the names of hostages it would free, and said it had struck terrorists. Hamas said the holdup in providing the list was a technical glitch.
“Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent,” said US President Joe Biden, who welcomed on his last full day in office a truce that had eluded US diplomacy for more than a year.
The truce calls for fighting to stop, aid to be sent in to Gaza and 33 of the 98 Israeli and foreign hostages still held there to go free over the six-week first phase in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
For Hamas, the truce could provide an opportunity to emerge from the shadows after 15 months in hiding. Hamas policemen dressed in blue police uniform swiftly deployed in some areas.
People who had gathered to cheer the fighters chanted “Greetings to Al-Qassam Brigades” — the group’s armed wing.
“All the resistance factions are staying in spite of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu,” one fighter told Reuters. “This is a ceasefire, a full and comprehensive one God willing, and there will be no return to war in spite of him.”
The ceasefire agreement follows months of on-off negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, and comes into effect on the eve of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who had said there would be “hell to pay” unless hostages were freed before he took office.

TRUMP AIDE: HAMAS WILL NEVER GOVERN GAZA’
There is no detailed plan in place to govern Gaza after the war, much less rebuild it. Any return of Hamas to control in Gaza will test the commitment to the truce of Israel, which has said it will resume the war unless the militant group which has run the enclave since 2007 is fully dismantled.
Hard-line National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir quit the cabinet on Sunday over the ceasefire, though his party said it would not try to bring down Netanyahu’s government. The other most prominent hard-liner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, remained in the government for now but said he would quit if the war ends without Hamas completely destroyed.
Trump’s national security adviser-designate, Mike Waltz, said that if Hamas reneges on the agreement, the United States will support Israel “in doing what it has to do.”
“Hamas will never govern Gaza. That is completely unacceptable.”
The streets in shattered Gaza City in the north of the territory were already busy with groups of people waving the Palestinian flag and filming the scenes on their mobile phones. Several carts loaded with household possessions traveled down a thoroughfare scattered with rubble and debris.
Gaza City resident Ahmed Abu Ayham, 40, sheltering with his family in Khan Younis, said that while the ceasefire may have spared lives, the loss of lives and scale of destruction made it no time for celebrations.
“We are in pain, deep pain and it is time to hug one another and cry,” he said.
Long lines of trucks carrying fuel and aid supplies queued up at border crossings in the hours before the ceasefire was due to take effect. The World Food Programme said they began to cross on Sunday morning.
The deal requires 600 truckloads of aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the initial six-week ceasefire, including 50 carrying fuel. Half of the 600 aid trucks would be delivered to Gaza’s north, where experts have warned famine is imminent.
The war between Israel and Hamas began after the militants stormed Israeli towns and villages on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 47,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks that reduced the Gaza strip to a wasteland, according to medical officials in the enclave. Nearly the entire 2.3 million population of the enclave is homeless. Around 400 Israeli soldiers have also died.


Head of UN chemical weapons watchdog to meet Syrian leader: authorities

Fernando Arias, Director General. (X @OPCW)
Fernando Arias, Director General. (X @OPCW)
Updated 08 February 2025
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Head of UN chemical weapons watchdog to meet Syrian leader: authorities

Fernando Arias, Director General. (X @OPCW)
  • The OPCW has asked the authorities in Syria to secure all relevant locations and safeguard any relevant documentation

DAMASCUS: The head of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog will meet Syria’s new leader Saturday, in a first visit since the ouster of Bashar Assad, who was repeatedly accused of using such weapons during Syria’s 13-year civil war.

“We will broadcast the President of the Syrian Arab Republic Ahmad Al-Sharaa and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Asaad Al-Shaibani receiving a delegation from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),” an official Syrian Telegram channel said in a statement.

The statement said the delegation was headed by OPCW chief Fernanado Arias.

In 2013, Syria agreed to join the OPCW shortly after a suspected chemical gas attack killed more than 1,000 people near Damascus.

It handed over its declared stockpile for destruction, but the OPCW has always been concerned that the declaration made by Damascus was incomplete and that more weapons remained.

Assad’s government denied using chemical weapons.

But in 2014, the OPCW set up what it called a “fact-finding mission” to investigate chemical weapons use in Syria, subsequently issuing 21 reports covering 74 instances of alleged chemical weapons use.

Investigators concluded that chemical weapons were used or likely used in 20 instances.


Hamas frees three Israeli hostages in fifth Gaza exchange

Hamas frees three Israeli hostages in fifth Gaza exchange
Updated 08 February 2025
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Hamas frees three Israeli hostages in fifth Gaza exchange

Hamas frees three Israeli hostages in fifth Gaza exchange
  • Bus carrying released Palestinian prisoners from Israel’s Ofer prison has arrived in the occupied West Bank

DEIR EL-BALAH, Palestinian Territories: Hamas released three Israeli hostages on Saturday, the fifth group freed under a fragile Gaza ceasefire, with Israel condemning their “cruel” handover and worrying physical appearance.

With Israel expected to release 183 prisoners in exchange, AFP journalists in the occupied West Bank saw a bus carrying freed Palestinians leave an Israeli jail and later arriving in the city of Ramallah.

A bus carrying released Palestinian prisoners from Israel’s Ofer prison has arrived in the occupied West Bank, live footage showed on Saturday.

The fifth exchange since the truce took effect last month comes as negotiations are set to begin on a more permanent end to the war.

It came after President Donald Trump floated a proposal for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants, sparking global outrage.

Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, who were all seized by militants during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the 15-month war, “crossed the border into Israeli territory,” the Israeli military said.

Jubilant crowds in Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv cheered as they watched live footage of the three hostages, flanked by masked gunmen, brought on stage in Deir El-Balah before being handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

But the joy of their release was quickly overtaken by concern for their condition, with all three appearing thin and pale.

The choreographed handover included forced statements from the three on stage, in which they stated support for finalizing the next phases of the Israel-Hamas truce.

Palestinians gather around a stage being prepared ahead of the hand over to the Red Cross of three Israeli hostages by Hamas in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip on Feb. 8, 2025. (AP)

“The disturbing images... serve as yet another stark and painful evidence that leaves no room for doubt – there is no time to waste for the hostages! We must get them all out,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose dejected-looking image appeared on a banner at the Deir El-Balah handover site, said that the images out of Gaza were “shocking.”

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog denounced the treatment of the hostages who were paraded on stage, calling it “a crime against humanity.”

“The whole world must look directly at Ohad, Or, and Eli – returning after 491 days of hell, starved, emaciated and pained – being exploited in a cynical and cruel spectacle by vile murderers,” Herzog said on X.

Sharabi, 52, was at his home in kibbutz Beeri with his British-born wife and their two daughters when militants stormed it.

The armed men shot their dog, before locking the family in their safe room and setting it on fire. The bodies of his wife and two daughters were later identified.

Ben Ami, who has dual Israeli-German citizenship, turned 56 in captivity. He was abducted from his home in Beeri along with his wife, who was released during the war’s first truce in November 2023.

Levy was abducted from the Nova music festival, where gunmen murdered his wife.

Former hostage Yarden Bibas, who was freed last week by Hamas militants in Gaza, on Friday urged Netanyahu to help bring back his wife and two children from the Palestinian territory.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu, I’m now addressing you with my own words... bring my family back, bring my friends back, bring everyone home,” Bibas said in his first public message following his release.

Hamas previously said his wife Shiri and his two sons Ariel and Kfir – the youngest hostages – were dead, but Israel has not confirmed their deaths.

The Hostage and Missing Families Forum urged the Israeli government on Friday to stick with the Gaza truce, even as Trump’s comments sparked backlash across the Middle East and beyond.

“An entire nation demands to see the hostages return home,” the Israeli campaign group said in a statement.

“Now is the time to ensure the agreement is completed – until the very last one,” it added.

Palestinian militants have so far freed 21 hostages in exchange for hundreds of mostly Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.

The ceasefire, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, aims to secure the release of 11 more hostages during the first 42-day phase of the agreement.

Negotiations on the second stage of the ceasefire were set to begin on Monday, but there have been no details on the status of the talks.

Netanyahu’s office said that after Saturday’s swap, an Israeli delegation will head to Doha for further talks.

The second phase aims to secure the release of more hostages and pave the way for a permanent end to the war.

During their October 2023 attack, militants took 251 hostages to Gaza. Seventy-three remain in captivity, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliation has killed at least 47,583 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.

with Reuters


Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies

Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies
Updated 08 February 2025
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Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies

Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies
  • Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the Gaza ceasefire
  • Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza

GAZA CITY: Hamas on Friday said Israel’s blocking of heavy machinery entering Gaza to clear rubble caused by war was affecting efforts to extract the bodies of hostages.
“Preventing the entry of heavy equipment and machinery needed to remove 55 million tonnes of rubble ... will undoubtedly affect the resistance’s ability to extract from under the rubble the dead prisoners (hostages),” said Salama Marouf, spokesman for Hamas’s media office in Gaza.
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the terms of the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza, including key items such as fuel, tents, and heavy machinery for clearing rubble.

The Israeli government and COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, have rejected the accusation.
Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.
Hamas’ armed wing released the names of three captives it said would be freed on Saturday in a fifth hostage-prisoner swap as part of an ongoing agreement with Israel.
“Within the framework of the Al-Aqsa Flood deal for the prisoner exchange, the (Ezzedine) Al-Qassam Brigades have decided to release” the three hostages, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the armed wing, said on Telegram.


US State Department lays out plans for $7 billion-plus arms sale to Israel as Netanyahu visits DC

US State Department lays out plans for $7 billion-plus arms sale to Israel as Netanyahu visits DC
Updated 08 February 2025
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US State Department lays out plans for $7 billion-plus arms sale to Israel as Netanyahu visits DC

US State Department lays out plans for $7 billion-plus arms sale to Israel as Netanyahu visits DC
  • In late January, soon after he took office, he lifted the hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel

WASHINGTON: The State Department has formally told Congress that it plans to sell more than $7 billion in weapons to Israel, including thousands of bombs and missiles, just two days after President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The massive arms sale comes as a fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas holds, even as Trump continues to tout his widely criticized proposal to move all Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop it as an international travel destination.
The sale is another step in Trump’s effort to bolster Israel’s weapons stocks. In late January, soon after he took office, he lifted the hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. The Biden administration had paused a shipment of the bombs over concerns about civilian casualties, particularly during an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Trump told reporters that he released them to Israel, “because they bought them.”
According to the State Department, two separate sales were sent to Congress on Friday. One is for $6.75 billion in an array of munitions, guidance kits and other related equipment. It includes 166 small diameter bombs, 2,800 500-pound bombs, and thousands of guidance kits, fuzes and other bomb components and support equipment. Those deliveries would begin this year.
The other arms package is for 3,000 Hellfire missiles and related equipment for an estimated cost of $660 million. Deliveries of the missiles are expected to begin in 2028.
 

 


Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies

People walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, January 30, 2025. (REUTERS)
People walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, January 30, 2025. (REUTERS)
Updated 07 February 2025
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Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies

People walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, January 30, 2025. (REUTERS)
  • Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead

GAZA CITY: Hamas on Friday said Israel’s blocking of heavy machinery entering Gaza to clear rubble caused by war was affecting efforts to extract the bodies of hostages.
“Preventing the entry of heavy equipment and machinery needed to remove 55 million tonnes of rubble ... will undoubtedly affect the resistance’s ability to extract from under the rubble the dead prisoners (hostages),” said Salama Marouf, spokesman for Hamas’s media office in Gaza.
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the terms of the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza, including key items such as fuel, tents, and heavy machinery for clearing rubble.

FASTFACT

Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the terms of the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza.

The Israeli government and COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, have rejected the accusation.
Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.
Hamas’ armed wing released the names of three captives it said would be freed on Saturday in a fifth hostage-prisoner swap as part of an ongoing agreement with Israel.
“Within the framework of the Al-Aqsa Flood deal for the prisoner exchange, the (Ezzedine) Al-Qassam Brigades have decided to release” the three hostages, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the armed wing, said on Telegram.