Hamas says ready to release 34 hostages

"Hamas has agreed to release 34 people according to the list presented by Israel in the first phase of the prisoner exchange deal," a Hamas official said on January 5. "Those released in the first batch will include women, children, elderly people and patients detained in the Gaza Strip."

However, the official said Hamas needed a week of cooling-off to contact the parties holding the men and determine whether they were alive or dead. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Hamas had not provided a list of hostages who could be released under a potential deal.

The comments come as talks are underway, brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar, to reach a deal to end more than a year of conflict between Israel and Hamas. The fighting has killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and nearly 46,000 in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of them civilians.

In the early October 2023 attack by Hamas, gunmen took 251 hostages, 80 of whom were released during the November 2023 ceasefire, some of whom were rescued by the Israeli army. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 96 hostages are still in the Gaza Strip, 34 of whom have died.

Qatar expressed optimism in December 2024 that negotiations would progress following the election of President-elect Donald Trump. However, both Israel and Hamas later said the other side had set new conditions and created obstacles.

The IDF announced on January 5 that it had attacked more than 100 targets in the Gaza Strip in the past two days, a move that was seen as a clear escalation. At least 88 people were killed in the past 24 hours, according to the Gaza Strip's health authority.

Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman for the Gaza Strip's civil defense authority, said the airstrike on the Sheikh Radwan home killed at least 11 people, including women and children. Rescue workers had to dig through the rubble with their bare hands to find five people trapped underneath.