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16-10-2025
GAZA/ CAIRO/ JERUSALEM: Israel delayed aid into Gaza and kept the enclave’s border shut on Tuesday, while re-emergent Hamas fighters demonstrated their grip by executing men in the street, darkening the outlook for US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.
Three Israeli officials said Israel had decided to restrict aid into the shattered Gaza Strip and delay plans to open the border crossing to Egypt at least through Wednesday, because Hamas had been too slow to turn over bodies of dead hostages. The militant group has said locating the bodies is difficult.
Meanwhile, Hamas has swiftly reclaimed the streets of Gaza’s urban areas, following the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops last week.
In a video circulated late on Monday, Hamas fighters’ dragged seven men with hands tied behind their backs into a Gaza City square, forced them to their knees and shot them from behind, as dozens of onlookers watched from nearby shopfronts.
A Hamas source confirmed that the video was filmed on Monday and that Hamas fighters participated in the executions. Media was able to confirm the location by visible geographic features.
DELAY IN HANDING OVER BODIES
Trump has given his blessing to Hamas to reassert some control of Gaza, at least temporarily. Israeli officials, who say any final settlement must permanently disarm Hamas, have so far refrained from commenting publicly on the reemergence of the group’s fighters.
On Monday the US president proclaimed the “historic dawn of a new Middle East” to Israel’s parliament, as Israel and Hamas were exchanging the last 20 living Israeli hostages in Gaza for nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners but so far, Hamas has handed over only four coffins of dead hostages, leaving at least 23 presumed dead and one unaccounted for, still in Gaza.
The group informed mediators that it will begin transferring a further four bodies to Israel from 1900 GMT on Tuesday, an official involved in the operation told media.
Aid trucks have yet to be permitted to enter Gaza at the full anticipated rate of hundreds per day, and plans have yet to be implemented to open the crossing to Egypt to let some Gazans out, initially to evacuate the wounded for medical treatment.
The highly public return of Hamas to control of Gaza’s streets demonstrates the hurdles to progressing from the initial ceasefire, phase one of Trump’s plan to a permanent settlement that would prevent a new eruption of fighting.
Gaza residents said Hamas fighters were increasingly visible on Tuesday, deploying along routes needed for aid deliveries.
Palestinian security sources said dozens of people had been killed in clashes between Hamas fighters and rivals in recent days.
Meanwhile, Israeli drone fire killed five people as they went to check on houses in a suburb east of Gaza City and an airstrike killed one person and injured another near Khan Younis, Gaza health authorities said.
Hamas accused Israel of violating the ceasefire. The Israeli military said it had fired on people who crossed truce lines and approached its forces after ignoring calls to turn back. A summit co-hosted by Trump in Egypt on Monday ended with no public announcement of major progress towards establishing an international military force for Gaza, or a new governing body.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently maintained that the war cannot end until Hamas gives up its weapons and ceases to control Gaza, a demand that the fighters have rejected, torpedoing all previous peace efforts. (Int’l News Desk)
