Kuwait City [Kuwait], November 24: Kuwait's ministry of foreign affairs welcomed Thursday the announcement by Qatar for successful mediation in brokering a humanitarian pause agreement in Gaza Strip, in partnership with the US and Egypt. The humanitarian pause will trigger an exchange of captives and detainees, notably women and children, in Zionist occupation prisons and in the Gaza Strip, in addition to a temporary ceasefire and entry of humanitarian and relief aid into Gaza, the foreign ministry said in a statement. Kuwait praises the agreement, but calls for continuation of such efforts to ensure a permanent ceasefire and protect Palestinians in Gaza from ferocious attacks by Zionist occupation forces.
The pause in the Zionist-Hamas war in Gaza will start on Friday morning with the first captives to be released hours later, mediator Qatar said, after nearly seven weeks of fighting. Families of captives held by Hamas in Gaza and of Palestinians detained by the Zionist entity were forced to wait an extra day after the breakthrough four-day truce deal was put on hold.
Qatar said the pause would begin Friday at 7:00 am (0500 GMT) with the "first batch" of 13 civilian captives being handed over about nine hours later. The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, confirmed the ceasefire would start at 7:00 am under the deal that is also intended to provide aid to Gaza's 2.4 million residents struggling to survive with shortages of food, water and fuel.
"The truce applies for four days, starting from Friday morning, accompanied by the cessation of all military actions from the Qassam Brigades and the Palestinian resistance, as well as the Zionist enemy throughout the truce period," it said. The office of Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was in contact with the families of the hostages after receiving "a first list of names" for those due to be released. It did not specify who was on the list.
Instead of a pause, fighting raged on Thursday. Explosions were heard on an AFPTV livecam and heavy grey clouds hovering over the territory's north, much of which has been reduced to rubble. Hamas and other Palestinian gunmen seized about 240 captives during unprecedented raids into the Zionist entity on Oct 7, which the Zionist entity says killed around 1,200 people. The attack prompted a relentless Zionist campaign of bombing and a ground offensive in Gaza, where the government says more than 14,100 people, mostly civilians, have been killed.
The Zionist entity's national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi had earlier indicated the phased release of at least 50 captives in return for 150 Palestinian prisoners would still go ahead, but not before Friday. On both sides it would free mostly women and people aged 18 and under. The Palestinians are to be freed from three Zionist jails. Three Americans are among those earmarked to be freed.
Governments around the world have welcomed the deal, with some expressing hope it will lead to a lasting end to the war. "This cannot be just a pause before the massacre starts all over again," Riyad Mansour, Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council. Zionist officials, however, say the truce will be only temporary. "We are not ending the war. We will continue until we are victorious," the Zionist entity's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, told troops he visited in Gaza, according to the army.
The release deal came after weeks of talks involving the Zionist entity, Palestinian groups, Qatar, Egypt and the United States. The Zionist entity's aerial bombardment continued overnight on targets in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, sending red and yellow fireballs and immense columns of black smoke into the air. Homes shook several kilometers away in Rafah, AFP journalists said. "I think there are still about 20 people under the rubble," said one Palestinian looking for survivors under a destroyed building east of Khan Yunis.
Thousands of children have been killed in Gaza, "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child", said Catherine Russell, executive director of the UN children's fund, UNICEF. Youngsters are among the estimated 1.7 million Gazans who, according to the UN, have had to flee their homes during the fighting.
Hospital patients have also been forced to move, the latest being 190 wounded and sick, along with their companions and medical teams, from Al-Shifa hospital to other hospitals in southern Gaza on Wednesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. The evacuation took nearly 20 hours due to delays at the checkpoint separating northern and southern Gaza, it said on X, formerly Twitter, adding that three paramedics had been detained, two of whom were subsequently released.
Zionist forces also arrested Al-Shifa's director Mohammad Abu Salmiya, another doctor and two nurses, a doctor told AFP on Thursday. In a statement, Hamas said it "strongly denounces" the arrest of Salmiya and his colleagues, calling on the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international bodies to work towards their "immediate release".
Instructions to evacuate the hospital were issued on Saturday, prompting the exodus of hundreds of patients and displaced, with Salmiya telling AFP last week that he had received the evacuation order from Zionist forces. But the Zionist army said the evacuations were carried out at the "request" of Salmiya. The military released an audio recording presented as a conversation between Salmiya and a senior Zionist officer in which the two men blame each other for the evacuation.
In the Red Sea, the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner "shot down multiple one-way attack drones launched from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen", United States Central Command said, referring to the Iran-backed rebel group. Displaced Gazans remained skeptical about the Zionist-Hamas deal. Fatima Achour, a Palestinian lawyer in her 40s, burst into tears when she reached Egypt through the Rafah border crossing, becoming one of the few Gazans allowed to leave because she has a foreign passport. "There's no city to go back to... There are no houses. Our lives have ended," she said. "This truce is not for us." - Agencies
Source: Kuwait Times