Killing Reported in Gaza Refugee Camp on Third Day of Truce

A Palestinian farmer was killed and another injured on Sunday after they were targeted by Israeli forces in the Maghazi refugee camp in the center of Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent said as a truce between Israel and Hamas fighters entered a third day.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the report and it was not clear if it would impact the latest phase of plans to swap 50 hostages held by the Palestinian militant group for 150 prisoners in Israeli jails over a four-day period.
Thirteen Israelis and four Thai nationals arrived in Israel early on Sunday after a second release of hostages held by Hamas following an initial delay caused by a dispute about aid delivery into Gaza.
Although the issue was resolved through mediation by Egypt and Qatar, it underscored the fragility of the truce, the first halt in fighting since Hamas fighters rampaged through southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages.
In response to that attack, Israel has vowed to destroy the Hamas militants who run Gaza, bombarding the enclave and mounting a ground offensive in the north. Some 14,800 people, roughly 40% of them children, have been killed, Palestinian health authorities said on Saturday.
Israel had said the ceasefire could be extended if Hamas continued to release at least 10 hostages a day. A Palestinian source had said up to 100 hostages could go free.
The armed wing of Hamas announced on Sunday the killing of four of its military commanders in the Gaza Strip, including the commander of the North Gaza brigade Ahmad Al Ghandour. However, it was not clear when they had been killed.
FREED HOSTAGES
Television images showed freed hostages on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing after leaving Gaza as Hamas handed the captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross late on Saturday.
Six of the 13 Israelis released were women and seven were teenagers or children. The youngest was three-year-old Yahel Shoham, freed with her mother and brother, although her father remains a hostage.
"The released hostages are on their way to hospitals in Israel, where they will re-unite with their families," the Israeli military said in a statement.
Israel released 39 Palestinians - six women and 33 minors - from two prisons, the Palestinian news agency WAFA said.
Some of the Palestinians arrived at Al-Bireh Municipality Square in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where thousands of citizens awaited them, a Reuters journalist 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 Sunday, medics and local sources said.
Even before the Oct. 7 attacks from Gaza, the West Bank had been in a state of unrest, with a rise in Israeli army raids, Palestinian attacks, and violence by Israeli settlers in the past 18 months. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, some in Israeli air strikes.
Saturday's swap follows the previous day's initial release of 13 Israeli hostages, including children and the elderly, by Hamas in return for the release of 39 Palestinian women and teenagers from Israeli prisons.
On Friday Hamas also released a Philippine national and 10 Thai farm workers.
The four Thais freed on Saturday "want a shower and to contact their relatives", Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said on social media platform X. All were safe and showed few ill-effects, he said.
"I’m so happy, I’m so glad, I can’t describe my feeling at all," Thongkoon Onkaew told Reuters by telephone after news of the release of her son Natthaporn, 26, the family's sole breadwinner.
AID DISPUTE
The deal risked being derailed when Hamas' armed wing said on Saturday it was delaying releases until Israel met all truce conditions, including committing to let aid trucks into northern Gaza.
Saving the deal took a day of high-stakes diplomacy mediated by Qatar and Egypt, which US President Joe Biden also joined.
Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan said only 65 of 340 aid trucks that had entered Gaza since Friday had reached northern Gaza, or "less than half of what Israel agreed on".
Al-Qassam Brigades also said Israel had failed to respect terms for the release of Palestinian prisoners that factored in their time in detention.
The Israeli military said the United Nations and international organizations distribute aid within the Gaza Strip. The UN said 61 trucks delivered aid to northern Gaza on Saturday, the most since the war began seven weeks ago. They included food, water and emergency medical supplies.
'HEART IS SPLIT'
Saturday also brought hours of waiting for the families of hostages, some of whose joy was tempered by the continued captivity of others.
"My heart is split because my son, Itay, is still in Hamas' captivity in Gaza," Mirit Regev, the mother of Maya Regev, who was released late on Saturday, said in a statement from the Hostage and Missing Families Forum.
Also released was Irish-Israeli hostage Emily Hand, initially feared killed, who spent her ninth birthday in captivity before being freed along with 12-year-old Hila Rotem, whose mother remains in captivity.
"We are overjoyed to embrace Emily again, but at the same time, we remember Raya Rotem and all the hostages who have yet to return," Hand's family said in a statement.

Libya's eastern-based parliament has approved a national reconciliation and transitional justice law, three lawmakers said, a measure aimed at reunifying the oil-producing country after over a decade of factional conflict.

The House of Representatives (HoR) spokesperson, Abdullah Belaihaq, said on the X platform that the legislation was passed on Tuesday by a majority of the session's attendees in Libya's largest second city Benghazi.

However, implementing the law could be challenging as Libya has been divided since a 2014 civil war that spawned two rival administrations vying for power in east and west following the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

"I hope that it (the law) will be in effect all over the country and will not face any difficulty," House member Abdulmenam Alorafi told Reuters by phone on Wednesday.

The United Nations mission to Libya has repeatedly called for an inclusive, rights-based transitional justice and reconciliation process in the North African country.

A political process to end years of institutional division and outright warfare has been stalled since an election scheduled for December 2021 collapsed amid disputes over the eligibility of the main candidates.

In Tripoli, there is the Government of National Unity (GNU) under Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah that was installed through a UN-backed process in 2021, but the parliament no longer recognizes its legitimacy. Dbeibah has vowed not to cede power to a new government without national elections.

There are two competing legislative bodies - the HoR that was elected in 2014 as the national parliament with a four-year mandate to oversee a political transition, and the High Council of State in Tripoli formed as part of a 2015 political agreement and drawn from a parliament first elected in 2012.

The Tripoli-based Presidential Council, which came to power with GNU, has been working on a reconciliation project and holding "a comprehensive conference" with the support of the UN and African Union. But it has been unable to bring all rival groups together because of their continuing differences.

Killing Reported in Gaza Refugee Camp on Third Day of Truce