CAIRO/JERUSALEM: An Israel-Hamas truce in the Gaza Strip stretched into a fifth day on Tuesday as the two sides completed the release of Israeli hostages and detained Palestinians under their original ceasefire deal and appeared poised to free more.
Israel on Monday said 11 Israelis had returned to the country from the Gaza Strip, bringing to 69 the total of Israeli and foreign hostages Hamas has freed since Friday under the four-day truce.
Hamas took some 240 hostages during an Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures, prompting Israel to retaliate by bombing the coastal enclave and launching a ground offensive in its north.
The Israel Prison Service said 33 Palestinian prisoners were released on Monday from Israel’s Ofer prison in the West Bank and from a detention centre in Jerusalem, bringing the total number of Palestinians it has freed since Friday to 150.
Israeli forces clashed with some of the dozens of Palestinians who gathered outside Ofer prison near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to await the release of Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The ministry said a Palestinian was killed in the area, and that it was unclear if he had participated in the clashes. Palestinian media reported he was shot dead. Israel had no immediate comment on the incident.
Read more: Gaza truce extended for two more days, confirms Qatar
In response to the Oct. 7 attack, Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip and mounted a ground offensive in the north. More than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed, Gaza’s Hamas-run government says, and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Qatar, which along with Egypt has facilitated indirect talks between the two sides, said that there was an agreement to extend by two days the original four-day truce that was to expire on Monday.
“We have an extension … two more days,” Qatar’s U.N. Ambassador Alya Ahmed Saif Al-Thani told reporters after a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting, saying both sides were to release more people. “This is a very positive step.
Each day since the truce began on Friday, Hamas has released some hostages while Israel has freed some Palestinians it holds. Of the 69 hostages freed by Hamas were 51 Israelis and 18 foreigners.
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