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.

After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves.

Yasmeen al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis towards its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility.

They spent a day under a tree before moving on to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the blistering sun, but not much else.

Dardasi's husband has a damaged kidney and just one lung, but no mattress or blanket.

"We are not settled here either," said Dardasi, who like many Palestinians fears she will be uprooted once again.

Israel has said it goes out of its way to protect civilians in its war with the Palestinian group Hamas, which runs Gaza and led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that sparked the latest conflict.

Palestinians, many of whom have been displaced several times, say nowhere is free of Israeli bombardment, which has reduced much of Gaza to rubble.

An Israeli air strike killed at least 90 Palestinians in a designated humanitarian zone in the Al-Mawasi area on July 13, the territory's health ministry said, in an attack that Israel said targeted Hamas' elusive military chief Mohammed Deif.

On Thursday, Gaza's health ministry said Israeli military strikes on areas in eastern Khan Younis had killed 14 people.

Entire neighborhoods have been flattened in one of the most densely populated places in the world, where poverty and unemployment have long been widespread.

According to the United Nations, nine in ten people across Gaza are now internally displaced.

Israeli soldiers told Saria Abu Mustafa and her family that they should flee for safety as tanks were on their way, she said. The family had no time to change so they left in their prayer clothes.

After sleeping outside on sandy ground, they too found refuge in the prison, among piles of rubble and gaping holes in buildings from the battles which were fought there. Inmates had been released long before Israel attacked.

"We didn't take anything with us. We came here on foot, with children walking with us," she said, adding that many of the women had five or six children with them and that water was hard to find.

She held her niece, who was born during the conflict, which has killed her father and brothers.

When Hamas-led gunmen burst into southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7 they killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the air and ground offensive Israel launched in response, Palestinian health officials say.

Hana Al-Sayed Abu Mustafa arrived at the prison after being displaced six times.

If Egyptian, US and Qatari mediators fail to secure a ceasefire they have long said is close, she and other Palestinians may be on the move once again. "Where should we go? All the places that we go to are dangerous," she said.

Killing Reported in Gaza Refugee Camp on Third Day of Truce