Hamas under pressure to find hostages, extend truce

GAZA: Hamas needs to locate dozens of Israeli women and children held hostage in Gaza by civilians and gangs before it can extend the current ceasefire, the Qatar prime minister said.

The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is back on track after the militants freed 17 more hostages, including 14 Israelis and an American, in a third set of releases under a four-day truce that the US hoped would be extended.

The hostages ranged in age from four to 84 and included Abigail Edan, 4, an American girl whose parents were killed in the Hamas attack that started this chapter of the war on October 7.

But Qatar’s leader Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told the Financial Times that Hamas couldn’t agree to the ceasefire extension until it located 40 women and children who were allegedly being held by civilians, gangs and other Islamist groups.

Hamas told Qatar, the deal’s main mediator, that it did not capture any civilians on October 7, instead blaming it on other groups and opportunistic Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would extend the current ceasefire by one day for every 10 additional hostages released.

But Thani’s comments cast doubt on whether Hamas could provide the hostages necessary to keep its side of the deal.

More than three dozen Palestinian prisoners returned to the West Bank yesterday. The 39 young men, wearing grey prison garb, were welcomed by several hundred well-wishers in central Ramallah in the West Bank.

In the fourth exchange expected – on the last day of the ceasefire, a total of 50 hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners were to be freed. All are women and children.

Hamas has said for the first time it would seek to extend the deal by looking to release a larger number of hostages.

The Israel Defence Forces said it was open to extending if more hostages were released. However, Israel has vowed to resume its offensive quickly once the truce ends.

The third release followed a second prisoner-hostage exchange that risked being derailed when Hamas’ armed wing claimed Israel had failed to meet all truce conditions, including committing to letting aid trucks into northern Gaza.

COGAT, the Israeli agency for civilian co-ordination with the Palestinians, accused Hamas of delaying the trucks trying to deliver humanitarian aid to northern Gaza at a checkpoint.

Ahead of the latest release, Netanyahu visited the Gaza Strip, where he spoke to troops. ‘‘At the end of the day we will return every one,’’ he said of the hostages, adding, ‘‘We are continuing until the end, until victory.’’ It was not clear where he went inside Gaza.

The killing of a Palestinian farmer in the central Gaza Strip had earlier added to concerns over the fragility of the truce. The farmer was killed by Israeli forces east of Gaza’s long-established Maghazi refugee camp, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Violence flared in the West Bank where Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including two minors and at least one gunman, late on Saturday and early on Sunday, medics and local sources said.

Even before the October 7 attacks from Gaza, the West Bank had been in a state of unrest, with a rise in Israeli army raids, Palestinian attacks on settlers, and violence by Israeli settlers in the past 18 months. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7, some in Israeli airstrikes.

However, Diaa Rashwan, the head of Egypt’s State Information Service, said the truce was ‘‘proceeding without roadblocks’’ despite the violence.

Rashwan said 120 aid trucks crossed from Egypt to Gaza on Sunday, including two fuel trucks and two with gas for cooking.

The aid was expected to provide welcome respite for civilians in Gaza left displaced by weeks of bombardment.

Israel has vowed to destroy the Hamas militants who run Gaza, bombarding the enclave and mounting a ground offensive in the north. About 14,800 Palestinians have been killed, Gaza health authorities say, and hundreds of thousands displaced.

The armed wing of Hamas also said that, since the war erupted, four of its military commanders in the Gaza Strip had been killed, including the commander of the North Gaza brigade, Ahmad al-Ghandour. It did not say when or how they had been killed.