Israel hostages latest: Hamas agree to release fifty women and children from Gaza after ceasefire deal

Russia welcomed a ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict on Wednesday and said humanitarian pauses were the only way to make progress towards a settlement.

“This is the first good news from Gaza in a long time,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“Russia and most countries were calling for a truce and humanitarian pauses, because only on the basis of such pauses can the contours of future attempts at a sustainable settlement be built.”

Since the start of the conflict, President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasised the suffering of Palestinian citizens, called the crisis a failure of US policy and urged Israel to show restraint. Russia also angered Israel by hosting a Hamas delegation in Moscow last month.

Western officials have accused Russia of employing double standards. They have suggested the Kremlin’s calls for Israel to stop bombing civilian areas in Gaza are undermined by its own constant targeting of civilian areas in Ukraine as part of its “special military operation”.

Indeed, the United Nations Human Rights Office confirmed yesterday that the number of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian attacks has surpassed 10,000, though they added that the true total was likely “significantly higher”.

Fifty hostages, including dozens of children, will be released from captivity in Gaza after a deal was reached between Israel and Hamas – marking a major breakthrough after weeks of fraught negotiations.

Under the agreement, which was brokered by Qatar and the US, at least 50 Israeli civilians – including the children and their mothers – will be released via Egypt during a four-day pause in hostilities.

The Independent understands that there will also be an exchange of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons but details were not yet finalised.

Our Chief International Correspondent Bel Trew reports.

Pope Francis on Wednesday met separately with Israeli relatives of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians with family in Gaza and said the conflict had gone beyond war to become “terrorism”.

Speaking in unscripted remarks at his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square shortly after the early morning meetings in his residence, Francis said he heard directly how “both sides are suffering”.

Israel and Hezbollah appear to be exchanging fires across the northern border only hours after a temporary truce in Gaza was negotiated.

Local reports have claimed in the last few minutes that sirens are sounding in the northern Israeli settlement of Kfar Rosh.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed that “warplanes attacked several terrorist targets of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in Lebanese territory” this morning.

He also posted a video purporting to show the attack.

Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah militia said five of its members were killed in its stronghold of Jurf al-Sakhar, south of Baghdad, in U.S. strikes that Washington said were in response to attacks by Iran-aligned militias against its forces in the region.

The U.S. carried out two series of strikes in Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday, its first publicly reported responses on Iraqi territory to dozens of recent attacks and a sign of escalation in the regional conflict tied to the Israel-Hamas war.

The attacks began on Oct. 17 and have been linked by Iraqi militia groups to U.S. support for Israel in its bombardment of Gaza following attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel.

The strike by fighter aircraft targeted and destroyed a Kataib Hezbollah operations centre and a command and control node near Al Anbar and Jurf Al-Sakhar, a U.S. defence official said.

An Iraqi military official said at least three members of Kataib Hezbollah had been killed and seven wounded in the overnight U.S. strikes.

Kataib Hezbollah is part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, a group of many mainly Shi’ite Muslim armed groups that was formed in 2014 to fight Islamic State and subsequently recognised as an official security agency by Iraq’s government.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has met with senior Hamas officials in the Lebanese capital of Beirut amid confirmation of a temporary truce in Gaza, local reports have confirmed.

Nasrallah met with Khalil al-Hiya and Osama Hamdan to discuss with them “continuing coordination”.

They spoken beneath a portrait of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

More than a dozen ambulances have arrived at the al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza this morning to evacuate some of the remaining patients.

Israeli Defence Forces took control of the hospital last week after claiming that Hamas was running a command post underneath it. They have yet to show conclusive evidence of this.

“14 PRCS ambulances accompanied by the UN & Doctors Without Borders arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital to evacuate the wounded and patients,” a Palestine Red Crescent Society statement said on X.

As of Monday, the United Nations said that just under 300 patients remained in al-Shifa hospital.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians were either sheltering there or being treated prior to the evacuation notices handed down by Israeli forces in the past few weeks. It is the largest medical complex in Gaza.

On Monday, the World Health Organisation said it had become a “death zone”.

A deal was agreed upon overnight for a four-day ceasefire in Gaza while roughly 50 hostages will be released from the enclave in exchange for roughly 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

But included in the deal are additional elements designed to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Israel will allow roughly 300 aid trucks to enter Gaza per day, according to one report. This would amount to a significant increase; in the previous weeks, less than a dozen have been permitted to enter the enclave via the Egyptian Rafah crossing.

More fuel will also be permitted into the enclave during the pause in fighting, according to one senior Israeli official, though it is unclear how much and to whom it will be given.

Previously, any fuel supplies have been handed only to United Nations organisations for fear of Hamas using it for their own ends. Overcrowded hospitals in Gaza have said previously that the lack of fuel is preventing them from performing life-saving surgeries.

The displacement of Palestinians in recent weeks has been the largest since 1948, the UN’s agency for Palestine refugees has said – warning of “an exodus under our watch”.

“We have just witnessed over the last few weeks the largest displacement of Palestinians since 1948,” UNRWA said.

“The scale of destruction and loss is staggering. It is an exodus under our watch. The younger generation, forced to live through traumas of ancestors or parents.”