Israel says 8 of 33 on Hamas list of captives to be freed are already dead

According to Israel, a Hamas list indicates that eight of the 33 prisoners who were scheduled to leave the country during the first phase of the ceasefire agreement have died.

Hamas claimed the other 25 people are still alive, according to government spokesman David Mencer on Monday. Israel claimed to have received a list of information from Hamas regarding the situation of the captives overnight.

“The families have been informed of the situation of their relatives”, Mencer said, without providing the names of the deceased.

Israel has stated that a third captive release will occur on Thursday, followed by another one on Saturday.

There are still about 90 captives in captivity. Prior to this announcement, Israel believed at least 35 of them were dead.

The truce deal in the Israel-Hamas conflict, announced earlier in January after months of fruitless negotiations, took effect on January 19, bringing to a halt more than 15 months of devastating war on Gaza sparked by the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks.

In exchange for more than 1, 900 Palestinians held by Israel, the first phase of the agreement will allow 33 of the prisoners to be freed.

Seven Israeli women have been released since the start of the truce, as have 290 Palestinian prisoners.

Following negotiations between Hamas and Israel, two Israeli women, Arbel Yehud and Agam Berger, will be freed on Thursday along with a third unidentified captive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made their upcoming announcement as part of the Hamas-to-Tito agreement on Sunday night.

In the second prisoner exchange of the ceasefire agreement, Arbel Yehud, a woman and a civilian, should have been released on Saturday, according to Israel.

The Israeli government accused Hamas of breaking the deal when she failed to appear, and in retaliation, the Israeli government ordered Palestinian refugees to flee Gaza’s northern regions.

Hamas claimed Israel broke the ceasefire, claimed it had informed mediators of Yehud’s existence and provided guarantees for her release, and that Hamas had violated it.

On Monday, following Hamas’s pledge to release Yehud and other captives this week, the blockage was lifted.

For the first time since the start of the devastating war, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza started making the journey back to the destroyed homes in the northern Gaza Strip later on Monday.

More than 200, 000 people were spotted heading north in Gaza on Monday morning alone, according to the UN.

According to UN data, about two-thirds of all buildings in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged during the conflict, and approximately 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents were displaced.

Despite the ceasefire, new bodies are being discovered beneath the rubble, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza on Monday, with a rise in the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza.

According to the ministry, there have been 11 bodies in the Gaza Strip’s hospitals over the past 24 hours, including two new fatalities and nine recovered after the truce. How the new deaths took place was not specified in the document.

The ministry said Israeli attacks also wounded at least 111, 494 people.