Third list of Israeli captives to be freed as Hamas says commander killed – live

Hamas announced the death of Ahmed al-Ghandour, without providing further details. He was in charge of northern Gaza and a member of Hamas’ top military council, and is the highest-ranking militant known to have been killed in the fighting.

Al-Ghandour, believed to have been around 56 years old, had survived at least three Israeli attempts on his life, and helped plan a cross-border attack in 2006 in which Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier, according to the Counter Extremism Project, an advocacy group based in Washington.

Hamas said he was killed along with three other senior militants, including Ayman Siam, who Israel says was in charge of Hamas’ rocket-firing unit.

The Israeli military had mentioned both men in a Nov. 16 statement, saying it had targeted an underground complex where Hamas leaders were hiding and accusing the group of concealing their deaths.

The Israeli military claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence, including several mid-ranking commanders it has identified by name.

Nine-year-old Emily Hand’s father sobbed as the pair reunited after she was released by Hamas on Saturday, 25 November.

She had been held captive since Hamas’s brutal incursion on 7 October.

Her father Thomas Hand, who was originally told Emily had been killed, can be seen hugging his daughter tightly in footage of their reunion.

“We are overjoyed to embrace Emily again,” her family said in a statement.

Live: Israeli doctor gives update on Hamas hostages admitted to hospital

A Palestinian farmer working in Gaza has been fatally targeted by Israeli forces during the temporary truce, a humanitarian aid organisation has claimed.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said this morning that two farmers had been hit east of the al-Maghazi camp in the Gaza Strip.

They said one had been killed as a result of the attack while one had been wounded.

“The association’s ambulance crews dealt with two cases a short while ago east of Al-Maghazi camp, east of the central governorate,” a statement read.

“Although the humanitarian calm has entered its third day, the Israeli occupation forces recently targeted two farmers.

“East of Al-Maghazi camp, which led to the death of one of them and the wounding of the other.”

A container ship owned by an Israeli billionaire came under attack by a suspected Iranian drone in the Indian Ocean as Israel wages war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, an American defense official said Saturday.

The attack Friday on the CMA CGM Symi comes as global shipping increasingly finds itself targeted in the weekslong war that threatens to become a wider regional conflict — even as a truce has halted fighting and Hamas exchanges hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

The defense official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the Malta-flagged vessel was suspected to have been targeted by a triangle-shaped, bomb-carrying Shahed-136 drone while in international waters. The drone exploded, causing damage to the ship but not injuring any of its crew.

The death toll for those killed in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank has been revised up from six to seven.

The additional death is believed to be of a minor, according to local claims.

The West Bank, among territories where Palestinians seek statehood, has experienced a surge in violence parallel to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, now in its eighth week.

The Jenin Brigades, a local armed group, said its fighters battled the Israeli troops in Jenin.

It did not immediately provide details on any casualties, but local witnesses said at least one of the Palestinians killed in Jenin was a known Brigades member.

The first Israeli hostage to be rushed into hospital for surgery as opposed to standard checks is expected to make a full recovery, her doctor has said.

Maya Regev, 21, was freed from Gaza last night after being taken during the Supernova music festival on 7 October.

She was the only one of 13 Israeli and four Thai hostages released that was subsequently rushed to Soroka Medical Center, in Beer Sheba, south of the West Bank. The other proceeded to hospitals in the centre of Israel for routine check-ups.

The director of the Soroka Medical Center, Dr. Shlomi Kodesh, has said this morning that she is in moderate condition and should not suffer any serious injury.

It is unclear why she needed surgery.

Maya’s brother, 18-year-old Itay, is still being held by Hamas in Gaza.

The Israeli forces have claimed that “five terrorists were eliminated” during a raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank last night.

Earlier, we reported that the Palestinian health ministry had claimed that Israeli forces had stormed Jenin “from several directions, firing bullets and surrounding government hospitals and the headquarters of the (humanitarian) Red Crescent Society”.

Israel, at the time, said it was checking the reports.

An update this morning said: “In the operation commanded by the 646th Reserve Brigade, five terrorists were eliminated, 21 wanted persons were arrested, a cargo laboratory was destroyed and an aircraft attacked from the air by an armed terrorist squad that endangered the IDF forces.”

As he sits in Geneva, Michel Dreifuss does not feel all that far away from the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza. The ripples are rolling through Europe and upending assumptions both global and intimate — including those about his personal safety as a Jew.

“Yesterday I bought a tear-gas spray canister at a military-equipment surplus store,” the 64-year-old retired tech sector worker said recently at a rally to mark a month since the Hamas killings. The choice, he says, is a “precaution,” driven by a surge of antisemitism in Europe.

Last month’s slayings of about 1,200 people in Israel by armed Palestinian militants represented the biggest killing of Jews since the Holocaust. The fallout from it, and from Israel’s intense military response that health officials in Hamas-controlled Gaza say has killed at least 13,300 Palestinians, has extended to Europe. In doing so, it has shaken a continent all too familiar with deadly anti-Jewish hatred for centuries.

The tense cease-fire between Israel and Hamas appeared to be back on track early Sunday after the release of a second group of militant-held hostages and Palestinians from Israeli prisons, but the swap followed an hourslong delay that underscored the truce’s fragility.

The exchange was delayed Saturday evening after Hamas accused Israel of violating the agreement, which has brought the first significant pause in seven weeks of war marked by the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian violence in decades, vast destruction and displacement across the Gaza Strip, and a hostage crisis that has shaken Israel.

The deal seemed at risk of unraveling until Qatar and Egypt, which mediate with Hamas, announced late Saturday that the obstacles to the exchange had been overcome. The militants released 17 hostages, including 13 Israelis, while Israel freed 39 Palestinian prisoners.