Israelis held in Gaza by Hamas and other armed groups are slated to “come back” on Monday, United States President Donald Trump said, with 20 living captives and the bodies of 28 others who died in captivity due to be handed over as part of the US-backed ceasefire deal.
Speaking to reporters at the White House late on Friday, Trump said Monday will be “big” as Hamas exchanges all 48 Israeli captives, both living and deceased, for roughly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
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“Some of those bodies are being unearthed right now, as we speak. They’re working on it right now,” Trump said.
“It’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy,” he said.
Of the living captives still held in Gaza, the US president added, “they’re in some pretty rough places, where only some people know where they are”.
Trump said he plans to travel to Cairo this weekend and separately speak at the Israeli Knesset before returning to the US.
Under the terms of the US-brokered peace deal for Gaza, Hamas agreed to release all captives within 72 hours following the start of a ceasefire.
Israel’s government ratified the ceasefire in the early hours of Friday, and it came into force later in the day. Israeli troops then began to withdraw from areas in Gaza to designated locations, and the countdown began on the 72 hours for Hamas to release captives.
Reports surfaced earlier this week that Hamas may struggle to locate and gather the remains of all the deceased captives, potentially complicating the planned exchange on Monday.
As Palestinians began to return to their war-torn homes on Friday amid the Israeli pullback, key questions about Gaza’s future remain uncertain – including plans for a future Palestinian state.
Trump, however, maintained an optimistic tone about both the first and later phases of his unfolding ceasefire plan.
Both Hamas and Israel, he said, are “all tired of fighting”.
“There is consensus on most of it and some of the details, like anything else, will be worked out,” Trump said.
“Because, you’ll find out that when you’re sitting in a beautiful room in Egypt, you know, it’s easy to work something out,” he said.
“But then sometimes it doesn’t work from a practical standpoint. But for the most part, there’s consensus,” he added.
The US president also appeared to be pleased with support for the deal from the European Union, Iran and Russia, saying that the peace plan will extend “beyond Gaza”.
Here is how things stand on Saturday, October 11, 2025:
Fighting
More than 450 Russian drones and 30 missiles targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure through the early hours of Friday morning in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a “cynical and calculated attack” that injured at least 20 people nationwide.
Throughout Friday, repair crews raced to restore power to more than 725,000 families in Kyiv and other cities amid widespread outages.
In a video message discussing the attacks, Zelenskyy said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “clearly taking advantage of the moment” as world leaders focus on implementing a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
Zelenskyy separately told reporters that Russia deliberately waited for bad weather before launching its assault, with inclement conditions reducing the efficiency of Ukraine’s air defences by 20 to 30 percent.
Russian forces killed three foreign soldiers fighting on behalf of Ukraine near Otradnoye, a village in northeastern Ukraine, where Russian troops claimed to have taken control earlier this week, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported.
Ukraine’s military said it struck Russia more than 70 times last month, decreasing oil refining in the country by more than 21 percent.
Peace process
The “E3” leaders of Germany, France and the United Kingdom condemned Russia’s “escalatory” attacks against Ukraine’s national infrastructure, promising to increase pressure on Russia as Putin “continues his stalling tactics and abhorrent attacks in response to peace talks”.
The leaders added they were “ready to progress towards using, in a coordinated way, the value of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s armed forces” in order to pressure Russia to negotiate.
During a three-day visit to Tajikistan, Russia’s Putin told reporters he remained “committed to the discussion that took place in Anchorage”, referring to his Alaska summit with United States President Donald Trump in August.
Putin’s comments were a sharp reversal from those of Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov earlier this week, who said that “powerful momentum” for peace talks has been lost since August.
US First Lady Melania Trump said she and Putin are discussing the repatriation of children caught up in the war, with some already returned to their families and more expected to be reunited soon.
Politics and diplomacy
Zelenskyy said he had spoken with several leaders in light of Russia’s overnight strikes – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz – and thanked all three for their support.
Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, visited North Korea for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defence treaty last year, and Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops and vast quantities of weapons to support Moscow’s war against Kyiv.
Putin told reporters that Trump “does a lot for peace” and praised the Gaza ceasefire deal.
Trump quickly reposted a clip of Putin’s comments about his peace efforts to Truth Social with a note of thanks to the Russian leader.
Regional security
Ukraine and the Netherlands signed a memorandum of understanding for the co-production of drones. Amsterdam has provided almost $9bn in support to Ukraine throughout the war, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry.
European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the EU must seek a “common European vision for defence”, and that Russia must be prevented from winning its war against Ukraine.
Putin said that Russia is developing new weapons of deterrence, and noted that it’s “not a big deal” for Moscow if the US declines to extend the warhead limits set out in a nuclear arms treaty that expires next year.
An explosion at a Tennessee military munitions plant has left 19 people missing and feared dead, authorities said.
The blast occurred on Friday at Accurate Energetic Systems, a manufacturer in rural Tennessee, a state in the southern United States. People reported hearing and feeling the explosion miles away.
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Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said it was one of the most devastating scenes he’s ever seen. He did not specify how many people were killed, but referred to the 19 missing as “souls” and said officials were still speaking to family members.
The company’s website says it makes and tests explosives at an eight-building facility that sprawls across wooded hills in the Bucksnort area, about 97 kilometres (60 miles) southwest of Nashville.
The cause of the explosion, which Davis called “devastating”, was not immediately known, and the investigation could take days, the sheriff said.
Aerial footage of the aftermath from the news channel WTVF-TV showed the explosion had apparently obliterated one of the facility’s hilltop buildings, leaving only smoldering wreckage and the burnt-out shells of vehicles.
There’s no further danger of explosions, and the scene was under control by Friday afternoon, according to Grey Collier, a spokesperson for the Humphreys County Emergency Management Agency.
Emergency crews were initially unable to enter the plant because of continuing detonations, Hickman County Advanced EMT David Stewart said by phone. He didn’t have any details on casualties.
Local station WTVF-TV captured the wreckage on the ground after the October 10 explosion [WTVF-TV via AP]
Accurate Energetic Systems, based in nearby McEwen, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment Friday morning.
“This is a tragedy for our community,” McEwen Mayor Brad Rachford said in an email. He referred further comment to a county official.
Residents in Lobelville, a 20-minute drive from the scene, said they felt their homes shake and some people captured the loud boom of the explosion on their home cameras.
The blast rattled Gentry Stover from his sleep.
“I thought the house had collapsed with me inside of it,” he said by phone. “I live very close to Accurate, and I realized about 30 seconds after I woke up that it had to have been that.”
State Representative Jody Barrett, a Republican from the neighbouring town of Dickson, was worried about the possible economic impact because the plant is a key employer in the area.
United States President Donald Trump has unveiled a second deal with a major pharmaceutical company to offer lower-cost prescription drugs direct to American consumers.
This time, the agreement concerned AstraZeneca, a multinational based in the United Kingdom.
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Trump hosted the company’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, in the Oval Office on Friday to publicly cement the deal, which he described as “another historic achievement in our quest to lower drug prices for all Americans”.
“Americans can expect discounts, and as I said, it could be, in many cases, way over a hundred percent,” Trump said.
As in previous press appearances, he pledged US consumers would see impossible discounts on popular medications.
Inhalers to treat asthma, for example, would be discounted by 654 percent, Trump said, calling the device a “drug that’s hot, very hot”. He also reiterated past claims that some medications could see “a thousand percent reduction”.
Trump has long pushed to reduce prescription drug costs to what he has billed as “most-favoured nations prices”.
That would bring prices down to the same level as in other developed countries, though Trump, with typical hyperbole, has said the policy would equate to “the lowest price anywhere in the world”.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot looks to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office [Alex Brandon/AP Photo]
AstraZeneca is the second major pharmaceutical company after Pfizer to strike such a bargain. Last month, Pfizer announced a “voluntary agreement” to price its products “at parity with other key developed markets”.
Like AstraZeneca, it also agreed to participate in an online, direct-to-consumer marketplace the Trump administration plans to launch, called TrumpRx.
But in a news release on its website, Pfizer made clear that the agreement would help it dodge the high tariffs that Trump threatened against overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers.
“We now have the certainty and stability we need on two critical fronts, tariffs and pricing, that have suppressed the industry’s valuations to historic lows,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said.
At Friday’s Oval Office ceremony, officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr openly celebrated the power Trump had wielded through his tariff threats.
“ The president saw something that we didn’t see, which is we had leverage, and that came through Howard [Lutnick] and the tariffs,” Kennedy said, giving a nod to Trump’s commerce secretary. “We had extraordinary leverage to craft these deals.”
The deals with both AstraZeneca and Pfizer came after Trump threatened in September to impose a 100-percent tariff on pharmaceutical companies unless they started to build manufacturing plants in the US.
“There will, therefore, be no Tariff on these Pharmaceutical Products if construction has started,” Trump wrote on his platform, Truth Social.
Those tariffs were slated to come into effect on October 1. But Pfizer unveiled its deal with the Trump administration on September 30, and the tariffs were subsequently postponed.
In Friday’s Oval Office appearance, Soriot acknowledged that, like Pfizer, he had negotiated a delay for any tariffs against AstraZeneca. In exchange, he pledged to increase US investments to $50bn by 2030.
“I appreciate very much Secretary Lutnick granting us a three-year tariff exemption to localise the remainder of our products,” Soriot said. “Most of our products are locally manufactured, but we need to transfer the remaining part to this country.”
Just one day earlier, AstraZeneca had revealed it would construct a “multi-billion-dollar drug substance manufacturing centre” in Virginia, with a focus on chronic diseases, a top priority for the Trump administration.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin praised the construction of an AstraZeneca facility in his state [Alex Brandon/AP Photo]
Trump himself touted his tariff threat as the impetus for the recent string of drug deals. When asked by a reporter if he could have brought the pharmaceutical companies to the negotiating table any other way, Trump was blunt.
“ I would never have been able to bring him,” he replied, with a gesture to Soriot. “ Now, I’m not sure that Pascal would like to say, but behind the scenes, he did say tariffs were a big reason he came here.”
Since returning for a second term as president, the Republican leader has relied heavily on tariffs – and the threats of tariffs – as a cudgel to bring foreign governments and businesses in line with his administration’s priorities.
He has called the term “tariff” the “most beautiful word” in the dictionary and repeatedly labelled the dates he unveiled such import taxes as “Liberation Day”.
But earlier this year, it was unclear if his sabre-rattling would pay dividends. In May, for instance, Trump issued an executive action calling on his government to take “all necessary and appropriate action” to penalise countries whose policies he understood as driving up US drug costs.
He also called on Secretary Kennedy to lay the groundwork for “direct-to-consumer” purchasing programmes where pharmaceutical companies could sell their products at a discount.
Trump, however, lacked a legal mechanism to force participation in such a programme.
In July, he upped the pressure, sending letters to major pharmaceutical manufacturers. The letters warned the drug-makers to bring down prices, or else the government would “deploy every tool in our arsenal” to end the “abusive drug pricing practices”.
He also openly mused that month about hiking tariffs on imported medications.
“We’ll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals,” Trump told a July cabinet meeting. “We’re going to give people about a year, a year and a half, to come in, and after that, they’re going to be tariffed if they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country, the drugs.”
“They’re going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200 percent,” he added.
The “most-favoured nation” pricing scheme is an idea that Trump tried but failed to initiate during his first term as president, from 2017 to 2021.
How that project might shape up in his second term remains to be seen. The TrumpRx website – which the president insists he did not name himself – has yet to offer any services.
Hamas and allied Palestinian factions have reiterated that any decision on the future governance of Gaza is “an internal Palestinian matter” as the ceasefire in the territory takes effect.
In a joint statement on Friday, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) joined Hamas in lauding the steadfastness of Palestinians, which they said foiled Israel’s plans for mass forced displacement in Gaza.
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“We renew our rejection to any foreign guardianship, and we stress that the nature of the administration of the Gaza Strip and its institutions are an internal Palestinian matter to be determined by the national component of our people directly,” the statement said.
The groups added that they are working on an “urgent comprehensive national meeting” to discuss next steps after the ceasefire.
“This will unify the Palestinian position, formulate a comprehensive national strategy, and rebuild our national institutions on the foundations of partnership, credibility, and transparency,” they said.
It is not clear whether Fatah, the faction that dominates the Palestinian Authority, has agreed to be part of the meeting.
United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan includes the creation of a new international body, dubbed the “Board of Peace”, that would be tasked with overseeing an interim authority of technocrats to govern Gaza.
According to the scheme, Trump himself would chair the board, which would also include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The first stage of the ceasefire, to which both Hamas and Israel agreed, is linked to Trump’s plan, but it remains unclear how Gaza will be governed going forward.
Captive releases; aid trucks for Gaza
Al Jazeera obtained a copy of the stipulations of the agreement, which calls on Hamas to hand over the Israeli captives within 72 hours without any public celebrations or media ceremony.
The deal also would ensure that at least 600 aid trucks reach Gaza daily, as well as the rehabilitation of water stations and the establishment of camps to shelter people in the enclave.
Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians began their journey to their homes in the north of the territory on Friday as the Israeli military started to withdraw from coastal areas.
The Palestinian Civil Defence said it retrieved 63 bodies from the streets of Gaza City after the truce came into effect on Friday. Thousands of Palestinians remain missing amid difficulty in pulling victims from under the rubble and reaching areas under Israeli military control.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud described near total destruction in Gaza City after weeks of intense Israeli bombardment.
“On the way to Gaza City, as we approached the main entrance on the coastal road, it was already unrecognisable by the vast destruction and devastation of many of the buildings,” Mahmoud said.
“During our displacement journey, when we left the city, we counted 15 buildings either partially standing or still fully intact, inhabited by some of the displaced families. On our way back, we did not see them.”
Later on Friday, the Gaza Government Media Office stressed the need for a comprehensive reconstruction plan for the territory.
The first phase of the agreement calls for the entry of equipment to remove the rubble – a first step towards reconstruction.
The deal also says that United Nations agencies and other aid groups would distribute the humanitarian assistance, effectively sidelining the controversial Israel and US-backed GHF.
Hundreds of Palestinians were killed over the past months as they tried to reach GHF sites deep inside Israeli lines of control. Rights groups have described the mechanism as a death trap.
But GHF announced on Friday that it will continue to operate despite the ceasefire.
“GHF’s team on the ground continues to provide humanitarian aid and food to all those who need it,” GHF executive director John Acree said in a statement.
“We will not rest so long as there are Gazans in need. It’s our mission, and it continues on.”
