The four Thais released on Saturday “want a shower and to contact their relatives”, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said a day later on social media platform X, adding that all were safe and showed few ill effects.
Eighteen Thais remain captive, Thailand’s foreign ministry said on Sunday.
“I’m so happy, I’m so glad, I can’t describe my feeling at all,” Thongkoon Onkaew told Reuters by telephone, after news of the release of her 26-year-old son Natthaporn Onkaew, the family’s sole breadwinner.
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The deal risked being derailed when Hamas’ armed wing said on Saturday it was delaying releases until Israel met all truce conditions, including committing to let aid trucks into northern Gaza.
Ensuring that the deal did not collapse took a day of high-stakes diplomacy mediated by Qatar and Egypt, a process US President Joe Biden joined, calling Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan said only 65 of 340 aid trucks that had entered Gaza since Friday had reached northern Gaza, which was “less than half of what Israel agreed on”.
Al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas armed wing, also said Israel had failed to respect terms for the release of Palestinian prisoners that factored in their time in detention.
The IDF said the United Nations and international organisations distribute aid inside the Gaza Strip. The United Nations said 61 trucks delivered aid to northern Gaza on Saturday, the most since the war began seven weeks ago. They included food, water and emergency medical supplies.
Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said there had been “a lot of discussion” on how and whom to prioritise for release and that a key criterion for the Palestinian side was the length of time spent in Israeli prisons.
“We are now hopeful that, with the second or the third day of this pause, we would be able to hash out a lot of these details that made this day so difficult,” he told CNN.
Before the delay to the latest hostage and prisoner exchange, Egypt, which controls the Rafah border crossing through which aid supplies have resumed into southern Gaza, said it had received “positive signals” from all parties over a possible truce extension.
Israel has said the ceasefire could be extended if Hamas continued to release at least 10 hostages a day. A Palestinian source has said up to 100 hostages could go free.