GAZA: A humanitarian pause in fighting between warring sides will extend by two days, mediator Qatar said on Monday as an initial four-day truce in Gaza was set to expire.
“The State of Qatar announces that, as part of the ongoing mediation, an agreement has been reached to extend the humanitarian truce for an additional two days in the Gaza Strip,” Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said on X.
Previously the Palestinian movement Hamas said on Monday that it was drawing up a new list of hostages held in the Gaza Strip “in order to extend the truce” with Israel.
The statement from Osawma Hamdan, a senior official, came as discussions were continuing on an extension of the initial four-day pause in the fighting and exchanges of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
Meanwhile, Israel said it was open to extending a truce if the Palestinian group continues to release hostages, as international pressure mounted for a longer pause in the Gaza fighting.
Over the course of the humanitarian pause and in weeks prior, Qatar, with the support of the United States and Egypt, has been engaged in intense negotiations to establish and prolong the truce in Gaza, which mediators had said was designed to be broadened and expanded.
After US President Joe Biden said the pause should continue to allow humanitarian relief into Gaza and more Israeli hostages to return home to their families, senior European Union and Nato officials added their voices to his call.
If no extension is agreed the temporary truce, threatening a return to intense fighting after the four-day pause.
As part of the truce deal, Hamas has so
far released 39 Israeli hostages, including a four-year-old girl orphaned by the group’s October 7 attack.
Israel has freed 117 Palestinian prisoners in exchange under the terms of the agreement. A further 19 foreign nationals have also been released from Gaza under separate arrangements.
Tearful reunions of families have brought the first relief from images of civilian death and suffering in the seven-week war, with hopes high for an extension.
“That’s our goal, to keep this pause going beyond tomorrow so that we can continue to see more hostages come out and surge more humanitarian relief into those in need in Gaza,” Biden said, calling for no longer operations “as long as prisoners keep coming out”.
Nato’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg also weighed in, ahead of a meeting of allied foreign ministers in Brussels.
“I call for an extension of the pause. This would allow for much needed relief to the people of Gaza and the release of more hostages,” he told journalists.
Hamas has signalled its willingness to extend the truce, with a source saying that the group told mediators they were open to prolonging it by “two to four days”.
“The resistance believes it is possible to ensure the release of 20 to 40 Israeli prisoners” in that time, the source close to the movement said.
Israel launched a military campaign to destroy, killing nearly 15,000 people, mostly civilians and including thousands of children, according to the Palestinian government. — AFP
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