“The movement has delivered its response to the brothers of Qatar and the mediators. We are approaching the conclusion of a truce agreement,” the Hamas leader said on Tuesday.
Talks are accelerating this Tuesday for the release of hostages in the hands of Hamas in exchange for a truce in the Gaza Strip where the Palestinian Islamist movement accuses Israel of a deadly strike on a besieged hospital.
“The movement has delivered its response to the brothers of Qatar and the mediators. We are getting closer to concluding a truce agreement,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Tuesday, quoted in a brief message on the movement’s Telegram account. Palestinian.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric, met on Monday evening with leaders of Qatar and Ismaïl Haniyeh, based in the Gulf emirate, in order to “move forward on related humanitarian issues to the armed conflict in Israel and Gaza.
The United States “confident”
Qatar, Egypt and the United States are currently working on an agreement to try to free hostages kidnapped in Israel by Hamas in exchange for a truce in the Gaza Strip.
Although the ICRC assured that it would not participate in these talks, it insisted that its “teams be authorized to visit the hostages in order to ensure their well-being and to administer medication to them, and so that the hostages are able to communicate with their families,” according to a press release.
“We have never been closer, we are confident. But there is still work. Nothing is done until everything is done,” said the spokesperson for the White House National Security Council , John Kirby.
And to a journalist who asked him the following question: “Is an agreement to release the hostages close?”, American President Joe Biden replied in Washington: “I think so”.
The recovery of hostages is one of the objectives of the ongoing Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip and launched in the wake of the bloody attack of October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement.
In Israel, 1,200 people, the vast majority civilians, were killed, according to the authorities, in this attack of unprecedented scale and violence in the history of the country.