Closing summary
It is approaching 10pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here are the day’s main developments so far:
Hamas has released six hostages in Gaza today. Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu were handed over to officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on stage in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Later, Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov and Omer Wenkert were released in Nuseirat in central Gaza. In the afternoon, Hisham al-Sayed, was transferred to the Red Cross without a ceremony and then crossed into Israeli territory.
Tal Shoham, Avera Mengistu, Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert and Hisham al-Sayed have all been returned to Israel. Mengistu and al-Sayed had been held by Hamas since they entered Gaza separately under unexplained circumstances about a decade ago. The family of al-Sayed described his return on Saturday as a “long-awaited moment”.
The release of 602 Palestinians from Israeli jail, scheduled for today in return for the latest six hostages released by Hamas, has been delayed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The reasons for doing so are not yet clear. It is understood that 445 of these prisoners were captured in the Gaza Strip after 7 October 2023 and will be released back into Gaza, while others will be deported.
Hamas has called the delay of the prisoners’ release “a blatant violation” of the ceasefire. “The [Israeli] occupation’s failure to comply with the release of the seventh batch of prisoners in the exchange deal at the agreed-upon time constitutes a blatant violation of the agreement,” Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif al-Qanou said in a statement, accusing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of “procrastination and stalling tactics”.
The body of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has been identified, after the remains initially returned were found to belong to someone else. Hamas said Shiri’s body had been “mistakenly mixed” with others who were killed and buried under rubble in Gaza.
The director of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Israel, Dr Chen Kugel, has said there is no evidence Shiri Bibas’ fatal injuries were caused by bombing. Hamas maintains she was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Hamas said on Saturday it was ready to move to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal and to carry out a comprehensive hostage-prisoner exchange to achieve a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. The comments were made before reports that Israel would be delaying the release of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
A third mass polio vaccination campaign began in Gaza on Saturday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists reported, with the aim of delivering the first dose to nearly 600,000 children across the Palestinian territory. Scores of children under the age of 10 received the dose at a mosque in Jabalia, northern Gaza. The vaccination campaign involves multiple UN agencies, including the Israeli-boycotted Unrwa.
British doctors who worked in Gaza during the war have issued dire predictions over the long-term health of Palestinian civilians, warning that large numbers will continue to die. The prevalence of infectious disease and multiple health problems linked to malnutrition, alongside the destruction of hospitals and killing of medical experts, meant mortality rates among Palestinians in Gaza would remain high after the cessation of Israeli shelling.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will travel to Lebanon for the funeral of longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday, AFP reported, citing Iranian media. An Israeli airstrike killed Nasrallah on 27 September last year.
That’s it from me, Donna Ferguson, and Middle East blog for this evening. Thanks for following along.
Two of the hostages who were freed today, Tal Shoham and Omer Wenkert, were held in extremely humid tunnels where “all the seasons felt the same”, according to Israeli media.
Both said they came to feel like brothers.
Wenkert was very badly beaten when he was abducted, he told his family, and did not receive the medicines he needed for his colitis while in captivity. His first request was to join the struggle for the rest of the hostages to be freed.
Updated
