Israel expects more hostages to be freed, prepares to release Palestinian prisoners

Hamas was expected to release a second group of Israelis on Saturday as a planned four-day truce to allow an exchange of 50 hostages for Palestinian prisoners continued to hold in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Egyptian security sources said they had received the names of 14 Israeli women and children from Hamas and were waiting for more details on when the hostages would be handed over to Egyptian authorities.

Israeli security officials were reviewing the list, though the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not confirm the number or timing of the expected release.

Earlier, Israeli prison authorities said they were preparing to release 42 Palestinian detainees, in line with the terms of the Qatari brokered accord agreed last week.

Under the truce - the first break in the seven-week war - 50 women and children held by Hamas are to be released in stages over four days in return for 150 Palestinian women and children who are among thousands of detainees in Israeli jails.

Hamas fighters freed 24 hostages on Friday - 13 Israelis, 10 Thai farm workers and a Filipino - and 24 Palestinian women and 15 teenagers were later released from Israeli detention.

The former hostages underwent medical checks before returning for emotional re-unions with relatives in Israel, where happiness mingled with concern for those still held by militants in Gaza.

"I am happy I received my family back, it's allowed to feel joy and it's allowed to shed a tear. That's a human thing," said Yoni Katz Asher, whose wife Doron and children Raz and Aviv were freed on Friday. "But I am not celebrating, I will not celebrate until the last of the hostages returns home."

Aid trucks

Both sides have said hostilities would resume as soon as the truce ends, though U.S. President Joe Biden said there was a real chance of extending the truce.

He said the pause was a critical opportunity to get humanitarian aid into Gaza and declined to speculate on how long the Israel-Hamas war would last. Asked at a press conference what his expectations were, he said Israel's goal of eliminating Hamas was legitimate but difficult.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its fighters killed 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages after they broke through security barriers around the Gaza Strip and rampaged through Israeli communities around the blockaded enclave.

Since then, Israel has rained bombs on Gaza, killing about 14,000 people, roughly 40% of them children, Palestinian health authorities say.

Hundreds of thousands of Gaza's 2.3 million people have fled their homes, including most of those in its northern half.

With the truce now silencing the guns, more aid has begun to trickle in.

Four tankers of fuel and another four containing cooking gas entered the southern Gaza Strip via the Rafah Crossing early on Saturday, Israeli authorities said, stressing they were meant for essential humanitarian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, such as hospitals.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said 196 trucks of humanitarian aid carried food, water and medical supplies through the Rafah crossing on Friday, the biggest such convoy into Gaza since Hamas' Oct. 7 assault on Israel and Israel's subsequent bombardment of the territory.

Aid groups have used the truce to evacuate patients and health workers from some northern hospitals that have all but collapsed due to attacks and lack of fuel.

The World Health Organization helped transfer 22 patients from Al Ahli hospital to the south on Friday, its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media platform X.

"To meet all the health needs in Gaza, much more support is needed and above all sustained ceasefire," he said.

"We are still afraid to feel happy"

Thailand welcomed the release of 10 of its nationals from Gaza on Friday under a separate track mediated by Egypt and Qatar, and said a further 20 were still behind held.

Among those freed was Thai farm worker Vetoon Phoome, whose family thought he had been killed in the Hamas attack seven weeks ago, according to his sister, Roongarun Wichagern.

"He said, 'I'm not dead, I'm not dead,'" Roongarun said from her home in northeastern Thailand, calling her 33-year-old brother's survival was a "miracle".

In Israel, hostages families had mixed emotions over the releases.

"I'm excited for the families who today are going to hug their loved ones," Shelly Shem Tov, the mother of Omer Shem Tov, 21, said on Friday in an interview with Israel's Channel 12, although he was not among those released on Friday.

"I am jealous. And I am sad. Mostly sad that Omer is still not coming home."

Roni Haviv, a relative of Ohad Munder, said she looked forward to giving the nine-year-old his favourite toy.

"I'm waiting to see Ohad and can't wait to give him his Rubik's Cube, which I know he really loved and he probably missed it so much," she added.

In Palestinian homes, the joy are being reunited with loved ones was tinged with bitterness. In at least three cases, prior to the prisoners' release, Israeli police raided their families' homes in Jerusalem, witnesses said. Police declined to comment.

"There is no real joy, even this little joy we feel as we wait," said Sawsan Bkeer, the mother of 24-year-old Palestinian Marah Bkeer, jailed for eight years on knife and assault charges in 2015.

Israeli police were seen raiding her Jerusalem home before her daughter's release.

"We are still afraid to feel happy," she added.