captives

Israel and Hamas have exchanged the remains of more captives, but the Palestinian group says Israel is failing to uphold the terms of the Gaza ceasefire agreement by refusing to reopen the crucial Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

The bodies of two more Israeli captives, one soldier and one civilian, were returned to Israel late on Tuesday, and identified early on Wednesday as those of Aryeh Zalmanovich, 85, and army Master Sergeant Tamir Adar, 38.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had earlier received the bodies in Gaza, in a handover organised by the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.

The Israeli military said that Zalmanovich died in captivity in Gaza on November 17, 2023, and that Adar was killed in fighting in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and his body was taken back to the Palestinian territory.

Hamas has now handed over the bodies of 15 Israeli captives as part of the ceasefire agreement with Israel.

An estimated 13 more sets of remains are expected to be returned to Israel, although Hamas has said the widespread devastation in the Palestinian territory and the Israeli military’s continuing control of certain parts of Gaza have slowed the recovery of the bodies.

The Palestinian group also released 20 living captives in one day at the start of the ceasefire.

Earlier on Tuesday, the bodies of 15 Palestinians killed in Israeli detention were returned to Gaza, where they were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex for identification, according to a medical source.

Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel released some 2,000 living Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons, and has committed to releasing the remains of 360 more deceased Palestinians.

A forensics team that received the bodies of some 45 Palestinians returned by Israel last week said that some arrived still shackled and bearing signs of physical abuse and possible execution.

Ubai Al-Aboudi, the executive director of the Bisan Center for Research and Development, said that Palestinians imprisoned by Israel should also be considered to be “hostages”.

“This entire system dehumanises Palestinians,” Al-Aboudi told Al Jazeera from Ramallah, adding, “when we talk about Palestinian prisoners, we are actually talking about hostages”.

Al-Aboudi noted that about 20 percent of the Palestinian population has been arrested or detained by Israel over the decades, and that the situation in Israeli prisons has deteriorated dramatically since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.

“Most of them are held without any due process, without being charged, and just based on military orders by a foreign military occupation,” he said.

Rafah crossing still closed

A delegation of Hamas officials, attending talks with Turkish officials in Qatar on Tuesday, said that the Palestinian group remains committed to the ceasefire deal despite Israel’s “repeated violations”.

Israel is delaying the implementation of the ceasefire by failing to open the Rafah crossing “for the travel of sick and injured people, and its prevention of the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza”, the Hamas officials said in a statement.

Mujahid Muhammad Darwish, head of the Hamas delegation, also highlighted “the inalienable rights of our people to self-determination and their right to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital”.

Turkiye was among the signatories of US President Donald Trump’s document on the Gaza ceasefire deal earlier this month in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh.

The Rafah crossing has remained closed since May 7, 2024, when it was seized by Israeli forces as they invaded the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip’s south, where close to one million people were sheltering at the time.

The United Nations has described the crossing, which connects the Palestinian territory to Egypt, as one of two “arteries” for humanitarian access.

The UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered Israel to reopen the Rafah crossing on May 24, 2024, following an emergency submission from South Africa, but the crossing has remained closed, with only limited access via the adjacent Karem Abu Salem crossing.

Residents of Rafah were only able to return to the destroyed city after a temporary ceasefire began on January 19, 2025, which also saw the Rafah crossing temporarily reopen to allow medical evacuations in February, before Israel issued new forced evacuation orders for Rafah at the end of March.

The crossing has remained closed for humanitarian aid access since May 2024.

Hamas has turned over the remains of two more deceased Israeli captives from Gaza, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced, as the Palestinian group accused Israel of continuing to commit ceasefire violations and repudiating the commitments made to peace mediators.

“Israel has received, via the Red Cross, the bodies of two hostages”, which were returned to Israeli security forces in Gaza, Netanyahu’s office said in a post on the X social media platform early on Sunday.

The prime minister’s office said the families of the Israeli captives have been updated on the return of the remains, although no names have been released so far.

The office said the two bodies have been transferred to the Israeli National Centre of Forensic Medicine, and “upon completion of the identification process, formal notification will be delivered to the families”.

“The effort to return our hostages is ongoing and will not cease until the last hostage is returned,” the prime minister’s office added.

With the handover late on Saturday, Hamas has now returned the remains of 12 of the 28 captives who died in Gaza, a key demand by Israel in the week-old ceasefire deal to end the two-year war.

According to the deal, Hamas was to return all of the Israeli captives – both the living and the dead – within 72 hours of its signing. In exchange, Israel was to release 360 bodies of deceased Palestinians and some 2,000 prisoners.

Hamas has said the widespread devastation in the Palestinian territory and the Israeli military’s continuing control of certain parts of Gaza have slowed the recovery of the bodies of deceased captives.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said Palestinian authorities do not have adequate equipment to help with the search for captives’ bodies beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings.

“It’s very difficult, with recovery teams on the ground facing extraordinary challenges. [They have] no bulldozers, no trucks, no cranes and no heavy equipment… to speed up the process and help with the recovery and return of bodies,” Mahmoud said.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, who is reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Al Jazeera is banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank, said that Netanyahu’s government has known “for some time” that the recovery of bodies of captives would be “an incredibly difficult and daunting task”.

Netanyahu, however, has accused Hamas of not doing enough to return the remains of the 28 and that all of the bodies need to be returned immediately, Salhut said.

“Until that happens, that’s when Israel is going to honour more of the commitments of the ceasefire, like letting in more humanitarian assistance, talking about opening the Rafah border crossing,” she said.

For days, Hamas and Israel have traded blame over violations of the US-mediated ceasefire.

On Saturday, Hamas accused the Netanyahu government of “fabricating flimsy pretexts” to not follow through on its commitments to the peace deal, as well as denouncing Israel’s refusal to open the Rafah crossing with Egypt as “a blatant violation” of the agreement.

On Friday, Israeli forces killed 11 members of a single family, including seven children, in an attack east of Gaza City.

The Palestinian Embassy in Egypt announced earlier on Saturday that the Rafah crossing, the main gateway for people in Gaza to leave and enter the enclave, would reopen on Monday.

But Netanyahu said the border crossing would remain closed until Hamas hands over the bodies of all the deceased Israeli captives.

The delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza also remains slow despite the ceasefire deal.

On Saturday, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said it had enough humanitarian food supplies to feed Gaza for three months, but trucks carrying the life-saving cargo are unable to enter Gaza and are stuck in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt.

“We must be allowed to get all this aid into Gaza without delay,” UNRWA said, adding that it also has equipment to provide shelter to as many as 1.3 million people.

Hamas agreed to return all of the Israeli captives – both the living and the dead – within 72 hours of signing a ceasefire deal with Israel.

It has been more than a week, and 18 bodies have yet to be handed over.

The Palestinian group is calling for heavy machinery to retrieve the remains.

It accuses Israel of purposely hampering the search, while Israel insists that Hamas is dragging its feet.

All the while, the lives of Palestinians in Gaza depend on the return of Israel’s dead.

Will Israel resume the war? And is the US prepared to give it the green light?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

Ori Goldberg – Israeli political commentator

Xavier Abu Eid – political analyst

Mehmet Celik – editorial co-ordinator at the Daily Sabah

Israel says Hamas is failing to meet commitments under Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan, while Hamas says Israel’s destruction makes recovering captives’ bodies nearly impossible. With 11,000 Palestinians also still under rubble, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh says tensions threaten the fragile truce.

“They’re digging.” US President Donald Trump appeared to acknowledge Hamas’s struggle to recover Israeli captives’ bodies from beneath Gaza’s ruins. Israel says it will not move to the next phase of the Gaza peace plan until Hamas returns the remains of all 28 captives.

Israel continues to restrict aid entering Gaza, saying Hamas has not met its end of deal to release all bodies of captives.

Handover comes as Trump says Hamas must disarm or be disarmed, ‘perhaps violently’.

Israeli officials have confirmed that all 20 living captives have been released in Gaza. Under the terms of Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, this should trigger the release of almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Cheering broke out among in Tel Aviv it was announced that Hamas had released seven Israeli captives into the custody of the Red Cross, the first to be released as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

Families in Palestine and Israel await the return of their loved ones as the Israeli-Hamas truce continues to hold.

Israel says it expects to receive all its remaining living captives from Gaza early on Monday, a key step in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas now in effect.

Speaking on Sunday, government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said that Israel anticipates all 20 living captives will be returned together early on Monday.

As in previous exchanges during Israel’s two-year war on Gaza, the captives will first be handed over to the Red Cross, which will transport them to an Israeli military base inside Gaza for initial medical checks before they proceed to Israel to reunite with their families.

A Hamas source told Al Jazeera Arabic that the captives have been moved to three locations in the enclave ahead of their transfer to Red Cross officials.

Once Israel has confirmed all its captives are inside Israeli territory, it will begin releasing Palestinian prisoners, Bedrosian said.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel is to release about 2,000 Palestinians it holds in detention, many without charge. The prisoners include 250 Palestinians serving life sentences. Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, whose release Palestinians have long sought, will not be among them, Israel has said.

Some detainees will be released in the occupied West Bank, where relatives have been instructed by Israel not to hold celebrations or speak to the media.

Israel is also preparing to receive the bodies of 28 captives confirmed to have died in captivity, according to Bedrosian.

Speaking in a televised address on Sunday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the captives’ release would be a moment of unity for the country, despite controversy over his handling of the war.

“This is an emotional evening … because tomorrow, our children will return to our borders,” said Netanyahu, quoting a biblical verse. “Tomorrow is the beginning of a new path – a path of rebuilding, a path of healing and, I hope, a path of united hearts.”

Some of the families of captives have criticised Netanyahu for allegedly prioritising military victory over their release. On Saturday, when the US envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, praised Netanyahu’s leadership at a rally in Tel Aviv, many in the crowd booed.

‘Trump’s show’

The planned exchange comes three days after Israel’s government approved the first phase of a deal aimed at ending the war in Gaza, and just as United States President Donald Trump, who spearheaded the agreement, visits Israel before a summit in Egypt.

Trump left for Israel from the Joint Base Andrews near Washington on Sunday afternoon, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA chief John Ratcliffe accompanying him on Air Force One.

“This is going to be a very special time,” said Trump on Sunday afternoon before boarding the flight. “Everybody’s cheering.”

On board Air Force One, the US president told reporters that the captives may be released “a little early”, that his relationship with Netanyahu was good, and that Qatar deserved credit for the role it had played in mediating the ceasefire.

“The war is over. You understand that,” Trump added.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because the network is banned in Israel, said: “It is Trump’s show.”

“He will be arriving in Israel, meeting with the families of captives, addressing the Knesset, and then going to Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, where he has summoned the leaders of more than 20 countries.”

As part of the Trump-led ceasefire agreement, Israeli forces have withdrawn from parts of Gaza, including Gaza City and other northern areas, although they still control more than half of its territory.

Palestinians returning to the combat zones they were displaced from have found widespread devastation, or “wastelands” where their neighbourhoods once stood, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported from Gaza City.

Humanitarian aid has begun to trickle into the enclave as part of the ceasefire, with dozens of trucks arriving on Sunday. But distribution remains slow for a population that has endured months of extreme deprivation, said Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary.

“People are not waiting only for food, but also for tents, mobile shelters, solar panels and desperately-needed medical equipment and medicines – items largely unavailable for the past two years,” Khoudary said from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. “Most people have lost their savings, have no access to bank accounts, and are completely dependent on humanitarian aid to survive.”

Leaders to convene in Egypt

The Gaza summit, scheduled for Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh, will be co-chaired by Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

More than a dozen world leaders are expected to attend, including United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi said that neither he nor Iran’s president would accept an invitation to the summit because they could not “engage with counterparts who have attacked the Iranian People”, in reference to the US and its strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this year.

Although both Israel and Hamas said they would not participate, Cairo has hailed the summit as a “historic” event that will seek “to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East”.

Egypt said that a “document ending the war in the Gaza Strip” is also expected to be signed at the summit.

‘Hard work’ to come

Despite the ceasefire progress, many details on phase two of the deal, which is still to be negotiated, need to be ironed out, including the exact makeup of a post-war administration for Gaza and the fate of Hamas.

The second phase is expected to involve a phased Israeli withdrawal, Hamas’s disarmament, the establishment of new security and governance arrangements, and reconstruction.

“After the big day tomorrow for Trump, after the release of the hostages… then comes the hard work,” Adnan Hayajneh, professor of international relations at the University of Qatar, told Al Jazeera. “If you look at the situation in Gaza, it’s like an earthquake happened… There’s no government. There’s no schools. There’s nothing there.”

US Vice President JD Vance appeared to acknowledge on Sunday that the road to stability would be difficult. “It is going to take consistent leverage and consistent pressure from the president of the United States on down,” he told US broadcaster CBS.

In a separate interview with ABC, Vance said that the 200 US troops reportedly being sent to Israel to monitor the ceasefire are not intended to have a combat role and will not deploy to Palestinian territory.

“The idea that we’re going to have troops on the ground in Gaza, in Israel, that that is not our intention, that is not our plan,” said Vance.

The US president told reporters that the bodies of Israelis who died in captivity in Gaza are ‘being unearthed’.

Israelis held in Gaza by Hamas and other armed groups are slated to “come back” on Monday, United States President Donald Trump said, with 20 living captives and the bodies of 28 others who died in captivity due to be handed over as part of the US-backed ceasefire deal.

Speaking to reporters at the White House late on Friday, Trump said Monday will be “big” as Hamas exchanges all 48 Israeli captives, both living and deceased, for roughly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

“Some of those bodies are being unearthed right now, as we speak. They’re working on it right now,” Trump said.

“It’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy,” he said.

Of the living captives still held in Gaza, the US president added, “they’re in some pretty rough places, where only some people know where they are”.

Trump said he plans to travel to Cairo this weekend and separately speak at the Israeli Knesset before returning to the US.

Under the terms of the US-brokered peace deal for Gaza, Hamas agreed to release all captives within 72 hours following the start of a ceasefire.

Israel’s government ratified the ceasefire in the early hours of Friday, and it came into force later in the day. Israeli troops then began to withdraw from areas in Gaza to designated locations, and the countdown began on the 72 hours for Hamas to release captives.

Reports surfaced earlier this week that Hamas may struggle to locate and gather the remains of all the deceased captives, potentially complicating the planned exchange on Monday.

As Palestinians began to return to their war-torn homes on Friday amid the Israeli pullback, key questions about Gaza’s future remain uncertain – including plans for a future Palestinian state.

Trump, however, maintained an optimistic tone about both the first and later phases of his unfolding ceasefire plan.

Both Hamas and Israel, he said, are “all tired of fighting”.

“There is consensus on most of it and some of the details, like anything else, will be worked out,” Trump said.

“Because, you’ll find out that when you’re sitting in a beautiful room in Egypt, you know, it’s easy to work something out,” he said.

“But then sometimes it doesn’t work from a practical standpoint. But for the most part, there’s consensus,” he added.

The US president also appeared to be pleased with support for the deal from the European Union, Iran and Russia, saying that the peace plan will extend “beyond Gaza”.

“This is peace in the Middle East, and it’s a beautiful thing,” he said.

US President Donald Trump says the Hamas-held captives in Gaza will be released “Monday or Tuesday” as part of his ceasefire plan creating “peace in the Middle East”. He added it is time for the war to end after Israel’s “big retribution” to Hamas’s October 7th attack.

The families of Israeli captives held in Gaza are celebrating news of a ceasefire agreement that includes the release of their relatives. Video shows the U.S. president telling families their relatives will return on Monday. The agreement marks the first phase of a plan to end the two-year Gaza war.

Israeli tanks are advancing in Tal al-Hawa, Sabra and other neighbourhoods of Gaza City in their ground invasion.

Hamas has issued what it calls a “warning” that the lives of two captives held in Gaza City are in danger as Israeli tanks push deeper inside several neighbourhoods of the besieged urban centre, where tens of thousands of Palestinians are trapped by Israel’s ground invasion and bombardment.

The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian group, said on Sunday that contact has been lost with fighters holding Omri Miran and Matan Angrest after “brutal military operations and violent targeting in the Sabra and Tal al-Hawa neighbourhoods during the last 48 hours”.

“The lives of the two captives are in real danger, and the occupation forces must immediately withdraw to the south of Road 8 and halt aerial sorties for 24 hours starting from 18:00 this evening (15:00 GMT), until an attempt is made to extract the two prisoners,” it said.

Hamas released a “farewell picture” of captives in Gaza this month in another attempt to stop the Israeli army as it systematically destroys Gaza City and displaces hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians once again.

Israel said 48 captives remain in Gaza, 20 of whom are alive. But the country has refused to stop the war despite being increasingly accused of committing genocide and as Israeli families call and protest for a comprehensive deal to end the war and bring back all captives.

Their pleas have not been heeded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, and relatives and supporters are blaming the government for their prolonged captivity.

The political wing of Hamas said in a statement earlier on Sunday that the group has not received any new ceasefire or peace proposals from mediators Qatar and Egypt, even as United States President Donald Trump continues to predict an imminent ceasefire, which he has done several times in recent weeks.

The group confirmed that negotiations remain halted after Israel tried to assassinate top Hamas leaders in Doha on September 9 as they gathered to review a new ceasefire proposal presented by Trump.

But Hamas said it is “ready to study any proposal from the brother mediators with positivity and responsibility, in a manner that preserves the national rights of our people”.

Far-right Israeli ministers said on Sunday that they oppose a 21-point plan presented by Trump and any other deal that would put an end to the war before eliminating Hamas.

In a post on X, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said: “Mr. Prime Minister, you have no mandate to end the war without a decisive defeat of Hamas.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he would “never agree to a Palestinian state – even if it is difficult, even if it has a price, and even if it takes time”.

More than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war in October 2023, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.

Dozens more Palestinians were killed in air strikes and shelling or while seeking aid on Sunday, including a child in a bombardment of the Sabra neighbourhood. Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis city reported an infant died due to malnutrition and inadequate medical treatment.

Israeli tanks are also inching closer towards the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which used to be the largest medical complex in Gaza but now lies mostly in ruins after several previous Israeli sieges.

Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of the hospital, said on Sunday that his team is committed to keeping the facility running as long as possible as patients and displaced people are sheltering there.

US president says if reports that captives are being moved above ground to hinder Israeli assault are true, ‘all bets are off’.

United States President Donald Trump has warned Hamas against moving the Israeli captives in Gaza above ground to hinder Israel’s military campaign, renewing his call for their release.

Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday that he had read a news report indicating that Hamas would use the captives as “human shields” amid the relentless Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

“I hope the Leaders of Hamas know what they’re getting into if they do such a thing,” the US president said.

“This is a human atrocity, the likes of which few people have ever seen before. Don’t let this happen or, ALL ‘BETS’ ARE OFF. RELEASE ALL HOSTAGES NOW!”

Trump has regularly posted threats against Hamas. But with most of the group’s leaders already killed, and Israel having destroyed much of Gaza in a campaign that experts and rights groups say is a genocide, it is not clear how the US president can further punish Hamas.

In recent weeks, Israel has been carrying out a systematic campaign to level what remains of Gaza City, targeting residential towers and schools, and forcing a mass evacuation of the area. The United Nations’s special envoy said on Monday that the offensive is part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Trump’s warning on Monday comes less than a week after Israel killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security official while trying to assassinate senior Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital, Doha. Those targeted were involved in negotiating a ceasefire and captives’ proposal put forward by the US president himself.

Hamas said its top officials survived the strikes, which Trump said he opposed. On Monday, Trump repeated his assertion that Israel would not be striking Qatar again.

Days before the Doha attack, Trump had issued what he called a “last warning” for Hamas.

On Monday, Trump again denied reports that he had advance knowledge of the Israeli attack. He suggested that he learned about it from the media – a claim that contradicts his previous assertion that he was notified about the strikes by the US military shortly before they were launched.

Asked how he found out about the strikes, the US president told reporters, “The same way you did.”

‘Human shields’

On Sunday, Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan, reported that Hamas was moving Israeli captives to homes and tents to pressure Israel to halt its bombardment campaign in Gaza City.

The Israeli military has long used Palestinians as human shields, both in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to numerous media reports, witness testimonies and video footage.

Last year, Al Jazeera obtained footage of Israeli soldiers sending Palestinian prisoners into tunnels and buildings in Gaza to ensure they were not rigged with explosives.

Israeli authorities regularly justify their atrocities in Gaza by claiming that Hamas uses civilians as human shields.

Over the past days, the Israeli military has been stepping up its attacks on the city and across the territory with hundreds of strikes.

On Sunday, Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz shared footage of a high-rise building in Gaza being obliterated by an Israeli strike, with the caption: “The house of cards. The skyline of Gaza is changing.”

Families and supporters of the Israelis held captive by Hamas sailed toward the Gaza coast to warn against a ground invasion of the strip. They tossed swim rings as a symbolic life saver for their loved ones, who they say would be hurt by a ground assault.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has compared newly released images of two captives in Gaza to Nazi starvation of Jews in the Holocaust. But Netanyahu is himself accused of committing war crimes by starving Gaza’s population. Warning: This video contains distressing images.

Hamas has said it is open to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering aid to Israeli captives in Gaza after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he requested the Geneva-based international organisation to step in.

The statements from Hamas and Netanyahu came after Palestinian groups last week released videos showing two emaciated Israeli captives held in Gaza, where some 2 million Palestinians are struggling to survive the Israeli-induced starvation crisis.

Netanyahu said on Sunday he had spoken to Julian Larson, the head of the ICRC delegation to Israel, requesting the group’s “immediate involvement” in providing food and medical treatment to captives still held in Gaza.

In a post on X, Netanyahu wrote in Hebrew that he told Larson that Hamas was propagating a “lie of starvation” in the enclave, but the reality was that “systematic starvation is being carried out against our hostages”.

Later on Sunday, the spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, said in a statement that Israeli captives held in Gaza “eat what our fighters and all our people eat”.

“They will not receive any special privilege amid the crime of starvation and siege,” the spokesman, known as Abu Obeida, said.

But, he added, the group is “ready to act positively and respond to any request from the Red Cross to deliver food and medicine to enemy prisoners”.

In order for requests to aid captives to be accepted, “humanitarian corridors must be opened in a normal and permanent manner for the passage of food and medicine to all our people in all areas of the Gaza Strip”, Abu Obeida said.

Israeli attacks “of all forms must cease during the receipt of packages for the prisoners”, he added.

The ICRC said in a statement on Sunday that it was “appalled by the harrowing videos” of the captives held in Gaza and reiterated its call to be “granted access to the hostages.”

“These videos are stark evidence of the life-threatening conditions in which the hostages are being held,” the ICRC said in the statement shared on X.

“We know families watching these videos are horrified and heartbroken by the conditions they see their loved ones held in,” the ICRC added.

On its website, the ICRC says that “securing access requires the cooperation of all parties involved”. The ICRC also says on its website that it “has not been able to visit any Palestinian detainees held in Israeli places of detention since 7 October 2023.”

In a separate statement on Sunday, the ICRC said it was also “appalled” that a Palestine Red Crescent Society staff member had been killed in a “clearly marked Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) building” in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

The PRCS had earlier said the attack was perpetrated by Israeli forces, but the ICRC statement did not refer to who was responsible.

One million women and girls starving

Meanwhile, the families of Israeli captives held in Gaza said on Sunday that Netanyahu’s continued insistence that a “military resolution” was the only solution was “a direct danger to the lives of our sons, who live in the hell of tunnels and are threatened by starvation and immediate death”.

“For 22 months, the public has been sold the illusion that military pressure will bring back the hostages, and today, even before reaching a comprehensive draft agreement, it is said that an agreement is futile,” the families said in a statement.

There are about 50 captives still in Gaza. Fewer than half are believed to be still alive.

The latest developments come as the Government Media Office in Gaza said that Israeli authorities allowed just 36 aid trucks to enter the Gaza Strip on Saturday, while 22,000 aid trucks continue to sit outside the Strip waiting to bring much-needed food to Palestinians there.

The United Nations office in Geneva on Sunday also warned that 1 million women and girls in Gaza are now starving.

In a post on X, the UN said: “One million. That’s how many women and girls are starving in Gaza. This horrific situation is unacceptable and must end.

We continue to demand the delivery of lifesaving aid for all women and girls, an immediate ceasefire, and the release of all hostages.”

At least 175 people, including 93 children, have now been confirmed dead from forced starvation, according to the territory’s Ministry of Health, including 17-year-old Atef Abu Khater, whose weight had dropped to just 25kg (55lbs) before he died on Saturday.

Israeli forces say they have recovered the bodies of three captives held in the Gaza Strip since Hamas’s 2023 attack, the military said, as its bombardment and attacks in the besieged enclave have killed more than 30 Palestinians, according to hospital officials.

The military on Sunday said the bodies of Ofra Keidar, Yonatan Samerano, and soldier Shay Levinson were recovered from Gaza “in a special operation”.

Samerano’s father had announced earlier on Sunday that his 21-year-old son’s body, which was taken into Gaza after he was murdered on October 7, 2023, had been recovered by the Israeli army.

Keidar, a 71-year-old mother of three, was also killed on the day, while 19-year-old tank commander Levinson “engaged and fought terrorists on the morning of October 7 and fell in combat”, a statement from the military said.

More than 1,100 people were killed and about 250 taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities. At least 50 of those captives remain in Gaza, with 20 reportedly still alive, Israeli media say.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the country’s ongoing conflict with Iran would help it win its war in Gaza and return the captives.

“We are getting closer, step by step, to our objectives: defeating Hamas and bringing our hostages home… I am convinced that the operation in Iran is helping us achieve our objective in Gaza,” said Netanyahu.

Hamas has repeatedly said it is ready to release all Israeli captives in exchange for a permanent end to the war on Gaza, the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the enclave, and the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

But Netanyahu has rejected the terms and continued his war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed about 56,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children – a brutal offensive that the United Nations, most governments, and rights groups call a genocide.

More recently, starving Palestinians desperate for food and other essential items are being shot, with more than 400 people killed and nearly 2,000 wounded since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial group backed by the United States and Israel, began distributing aid last month.

Israeli forces killed at least 33 Palestinians since dawn on Sunday, six of them while seeking aid, hospital sources in Gaza told Al Jazeera. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said at least 51 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours.

Since March 18, when Israel broke a fragile two-month ceasefire and launched a massive assault on Gaza, at least 5,647 Palestinians have been killed and 19,201 wounded, according to the ministry.

‘The situation is collapsing and deteriorating’

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said Israeli forces continue to target different residential areas across the enclave and aid distribution points.

“Israeli forces continue to attack aid seekers who have been very close to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution points, where at least seven Palestinians have been killed since this morning,” Khoudary said.

“In hospitals here across the Gaza Strip, the situation is collapsing and deteriorating as Gaza’s hospitals are running out of fuel and also medical supplies.”

Medical services in Gaza say ambulances have completely stopped operating in Gaza City due to Israel’s ban on fuel entering the enclave.

The Israeli blockade of food and medicines has pushed its entire population of more than two million to the brink of starvation.

Another Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza on Sunday said at least six people were killed overnight during an Israel-imposed internet blackout that lasted five hours and was accompanied by heavy Israeli artillery firing targeting areas in eastern and central Gaza.

Three of them were killed after a rocket hit a tent housing displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi to the west of Khan Younis city. A man and his wife were killed in another strike targeting an apartment to the north of Nuseirat.

On Sunday, the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV called on the world not to forget the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as the conflict in the Middle East broadened with overnight US strikes on Iran.

“In this context that includes Israel and Palestine, there is a risk that the daily suffering of peoples is forgotten, in particular in Gaza and other territories, where there is an ever greater urgency for adequate humanitarian aid,” he said.