Pallade Veneta - Hamas set to free more hostages as Gaza truce expiry looms

The cessation of hostilities is scheduled to end early Thursday after a six-day halt in a conflict sparked by deadly Hamas attacks that prompted a devastating Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Underlining the sense of urgency, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due to make his third wartime visit to the Middle East as part of efforts to prolong the pause in fighting.

In a sign of the challenges facing negotiators, a Hamas source said the Palestinian militant group was not satisfied with Israel's proposals for another extension.

"What is being proposed in the discussions to extend the truce is not the best," the source told AFP, adding that the talks were focused on extending the pause by "two days or more".

Israel's war cabinet was meeting late Wednesday over proposals to extend the truce, media reports said.

Another source close to the Palestinian militant group said Hamas's armed wing had handed over another group of Israeli hostages to the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

The source did not say how many hostages were involved in the latest exchange and there was no immediate confirmation from Israel that the group was free.

It would be the sixth group released under the truce agreement brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

Hamas also said it had freed two women hostages with Russian citizenship.

Their release was outside the scope of the Israel-Hamas agreement, in what the Palestinian group described as recognition of the "efforts" of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The truce deal has brought a temporary halt to fighting that began on October 7 when Hamas militants poured over the border into Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 240, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel's subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 15,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas officials, and reduced large parts of the north of the territory to rubble.

- 'Epic humanitarian catastrophe' -

As efforts intensified to extend the pause in fighting, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded a "true humanitarian ceasefire".

Gazans are "in the midst of an epic humanitarian catastrophe," Guterres told a UN Security Council meeting, after seven weeks of bombing that have left buildings levelled and inhabitants short of food and water.

So far 60 Israeli hostages and 180 Palestinian prisoners have been released under the truce agreement to the joy of their relatives.

Hamas has also released more than 20 other hostages outside the scope of the truce agreement, mostly Thais.

Complicating matters, some of the remaining hostages in Gaza are in the hands of another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad.

Its spokesman Musab al-Breim told AFP on Tuesday that "the war is now continuing in indirect negotiations with the Israeli occupier".

He said his group and Hamas were "committed" to respecting the truce agreement "as long as the occupier does so, and we are ready to pursue a political route to make the occupier pay".

- Baby hostage reported dead -

Alongside emotional reunions, there were also saw fresh reminders of the tragic stakes of the conflict.

Israel's army said it was investigating a report by Hamas's armed wing that a 10-month-old baby hostage, his four-year-old brother and their mother had all been killed in an Israeli bombing in Gaza.

The military was "assessing the accuracy of the information", it said in a statement.

"Hamas is wholly responsible for the security of all hostages in the Gaza Strip," it added. "Hamas' actions continue to endanger the hostages, which include nine children."

With tensions high despite the truce, the Palestinian health ministry in the occupied West Bank said the Israeli army shot and killed an eight-year-old boy and a teenager in the territory on Wednesday.

The military said troops had "responded with live fire" after explosive devices had been hurled at them.

- 'Willing to extend truce' -

After the pause in hostilities entered its sixth day, a source close to Hamas told AFP on condition of anonymity the militant group "informed the mediators that it is willing to extend the truce for four days".

Under that arrangement, "the movement would be able to release Israeli prisoners that it, other resistance movements and other parties hold during this period, according to the terms of the existing truce," the source added.

Speaking after a NATO meeting in Brussels, Blinken said he would be "focused on doing what we can to extend the pause so that we continue to get more hostages out and more humanitarian assistance in".

The World Food Programme has warned that Gaza's population faces a "high risk of famine if WFP is not able to provide continued access to food."

Conditions in the territory were "catastrophic", the agency's Middle East director Corinne Fleischer said.

The spokesman for the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, Ashraf al-Qudra, told AFP Wednesday that doctors found five premature babies dead in Gaza City's Al-Nasr hospital.

- 'Everything is gone' -

An estimated 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes so far, more than half the territory's population, according to the United Nations.

"I discovered that my house had been completely destroyed -- 27 years of my life to build it and everything is gone!" said Taghrid al-Najjar, 46, after returning to her home in southeastern Gaza.

Israel has made clear it sees the truce as an interlude to ensure hostage releases before its war to destroy Hamas continues.

Blinken said he believed an extension was in Israel's interest.

"They're also intensely focused on bringing their people home, so we're working on that," he said.

burs-dr/hkb

H.Ercolani--PV