An agreement has been reached to extend the truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas by two more days, Qatar\u2019s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said on Monday on X. <\/p>\n
The announcement comes after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a call on Monday with the prime minister of Qatar, which helped broker the original four-day truce, according to a source familiar with the discussions. <\/p>\n
Egypt had said earlier that there were ongoing efforts to extend the pause by two days. <\/p>\n
The four-day truce in Gaza, which was slated to end on Tuesday, marked the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the conflict, bringing temporary respite for Palestinians in the besieged enclave and allowing the release of 40 Israeli hostages. <\/p>\n
Hamas said it agreed with Qatar and Egypt, to extend the truce for an additional two days \u201cunder the same conditions reached before.\u201d <\/p>\n
Regev said that under the agreement Hamas will release 10 hostages each day. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor every 10 hostages released, we\u2019re willing to give an extension of another day, and if Hamas will release Israeli hostages as agreed we will extend \u2014 that\u2019s the bottom line,\u201d Regev said. <\/p>\n
Regev said he believes the hostages released over the next two days would be women and children. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy understanding is that there\u2019s still enough women and children in Gaza held by Hamas for the next 20,\u201d Regev said. <\/p>\n
Regev credited US President Joe Biden for helping arrange the parameters of the deal. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese were negotiated with the help of President Biden and we thank him for putting his effort and his office behind these arrangements.\u00a0I don\u2019t think we would have reached the deal without his input,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In a statement, Biden praised the extension and said he has been \u201cdeeply engaged\u201d as the truce has played out. He went on to thank the leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt \u201cfor their commitment to this process and in reaching the agreement for an extension.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not stop until all of the hostages held by Hamas terrorists are released,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Israeli and US officials believed that there were more women and children being held in captivity than 50, but agreed to the terms of the deal as Hamas insisted that it needed to use the pause in fighting to gather up additional hostages. <\/p>\n
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby welcomed news of the extension of the truce Monday, saying that \u201cHamas has committed to releasing another 20 women and children over the next two days.\u201d The White House also said they \u201chope to see\u201d the pause extended further. <\/p>\n
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said the prime minister of Qatar held a call with President Biden. This has been corrected.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n An agreement has been reached to extend the truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas by two more days, Qatar\u2019s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said on Monday on X. The announcement comes after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a call on Monday with the prime minister of Qatar, which helped broker the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}