Hamas official says hostage and prisoner lists exchanged with Israel
Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nounou said on Wednesday that negotiators from his group and Israel have exchanged lists of prisoners and hostages who would be released should a deal be reached during the ongoing Gaza ceasefire talks in Egypt.
According to Reuters, al-Nounou also said Hamas expressed optimism about reaching a deal, stating that the group has demonstrated the necessary positivity.
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Iran has released a 19-year-old Franco-German national days after throwing out spying charges against him, the French foreign minister has announced.
“Lennart Monterlos is free,” Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on X, and is due to travel back to France on Thursday, sources have told AFP.
Monterlos was arrested on 16 June in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, on the third day of the brief war between Iran and Israel. He had been cycling alone across Iran on a Europe-to-Asia bike trip, and was preparing to cross the border into Afghanistan.
Iran’s judiciary announced on Monday that the espionage accusations would be dropped.
France, which has multiple other nationals imprisoned in Iran, had condemned Monterlos’s detention as arbitrary. Iran is believed to hold about 20 Europeans in detention.
French couple Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, accused of spying for Israel, have been in detention in Iran for nearly three and a half years and face the death penalty.
“I have not forgotten Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, whose immediate release we demand,” Barrot said.
Kohler and Paris, who were on the last day of a tourist trip in May 2022, are slated to be part of a potential prisoner swap for an Iranian woman held in France.
Mahdieh Esfandiari was arrested in France in February on charges of promoting terrorism on social media, according to French authorities. Iran has repeatedly called her detention arbitrary but maintains that the French couple were spying on behalf of Israel.
But there have been positive signals from France and Iran for a swap, with Iranian top diplomat Abbas Araghchi saying last month a deal was nearing its final stages.
Barrot said in a media interview on Monday there were “strong prospects of being able to bring them back in the coming weeks”.
In March, Frenchman Olivier Grondeau, who had been detained in Iran since October 2022, was released.
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Updated at 17.14 CEST
South Korea’s foreign ministry on Wednesday urged the swift release of its citizen detained after Israel’s navy seized an aid boat en route to Gaza, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Organisers of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said Israel intercepted at least three boats and detained the activists onboard, with Seoul’s foreign ministry confirming a South Korean national was among them.
The Israeli foreign ministry confirmed it had intercepted boats entering waters it says fall under its blockade of the Palestinian territory.
In a pre-recorded video posted on social media after the interception, South Korean activist Kim Ah-hyun appealed to her government to demand her release.
“We will continue to request the Israeli authorities … ensure the swift and fair release of our national as soon as possible,” Seoul’s foreign ministry said in a statement sent to AFP.
“We will also actively provide necessary consular assistance,” the ministry added, without naming Kim.
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Palestinian journalists and local officials rallied against Israeli attacks on Gaza media workers on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists reported.
Dozens of journalists and Palestinian officials marched towards the city’s UN headquarters carrying coffins bearing the names and photos of journalists killed in the Gaza Strip since the war started on 7 October 2023.
Nasser Abu Baker, head of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which organised the event, said:
All of them, every single one of them has his own story.
After the speeches, Abu Baker said he would hand over a letter to the UN representative in Ramallah asking for the secretary general António Guterres to take measures “to protect our journalists in Gaza because they are daily under the fire, under the bombing strike, in a very dangerous situation”.
Abu Baker said that his syndicate had reported the killing of 252 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since 7 October 2023.
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Here are some of the latest photos of Gaza coming to us through the wires.
Palestinian man Jehad al-Shagnobi, who was injured in an earlier Israeli strike on his house, walks with an external fixator on his arm to inspect the damage at his home in Sabra neighbourhood, after an Israeli operation, at Sabra neighbourhood in Gaza City, on Wednesday, 8 October 2025. Photograph: Ebrahim Hajjaj/ReutersA delegation from the World Health Organization arrive al-Ahli Baptist hospital to examine patients and assess preparations for evacuations the south of the Gaza City, Gaza, on Wednesday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesA Palestinian child living in an accommodation centre carries a canister amid the rubble of collapsed buildings in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Wednesday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesSmoke rises after an Israeli strike on the Sabra neighbourhood in southern Gaza City, as Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip continue without interruption and military activity in the region persists in Gaza City, Gaza on Wednesday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesShareRobert Tait
Robert Tait is political correspondent for Guardian US, based in Washington DC. He was previously the Guardian’s correspondent in the Czech Republic, Iran and Turkey.
They seemed to be the ties that would for ever bind.
For three-quarters of a century, unshakable support for Israel – in the form of military aid and diplomatic backing, and underpinned by broad public sentiment – has been an indelible feature of the US political landscape.
But Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Michigan, tipped by some as a rising star, detected something had changed as he campaigned in 100 towns and cities across what has long been one of the country’s election swing states.
“There’s no doubt that there’s been a change,” he said. “We’ve now lived through genocide, and that is bound to change public opinion in a pretty profound way.”
Two years after Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 that killed almost 1,200 – mostly civilians – on the Israeli side and which initially generated a surge in popular solidarity, the views of the American public have indeed undergone a remarkable transformation, polls and analysts say.
You can read more of Robert Tait’s analysis here: Polls and politics point to a sea change in US views on Israel. Will it matter?
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Summary of the day so far
It has just gone 5pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here is a summary of the developments so far on today’s blog:
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Delegates from the United States and Turkey as well as Qatar’s prime minister have joined Hamas and Israeli negotiators on Wednesday for a third day of talks aimed at ending the Gaza war. Israel and Hamas are holding indirect negotiations in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, based on a 20-point plan proposed by Donald Trump.
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Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nounou said on Wednesday that negotiators from his group and Israel have exchanged lists of prisoners and hostages who would be released should a deal be reached during the ongoing Gaza ceasefire talks in Egypt. Al-Nounou also said Hamas expressed optimism about reaching a deal, stating that the group has demonstrated the necessary positivity.
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Hamas have condemned Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to al-Aqsa compound on Wednesday as a “deliberate provocation”. Israel’s far-right national security minister prayed at al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem on Wednesday and called on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pursue “complete victory” over Hamas in Gaza.
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Ben Gvir’s remarks came as Israel and Hamas are deep in indirect negotiations in Egypt to release all remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza and end the war there. Gaza’s Islamic Jihad group, which is smaller than Hamas and also holds Israeli hostages, will also join the talks today.
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US secretary of state Marco Rubio is expected to attend a ministerial meeting on Thursday in Paris with European, Arab and other states to discuss Gaza’s postwar transition, three diplomatic sources told Reuters on Wednesday. The meeting, which will be held in parallel with the negotiations in Egypt, is intended to discuss how to implement Trump’s plan and assess countries’ collective commitments.
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Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday it was neither fair nor realistic to put the burden of achieving peace in Gaza solely on Hamas and Palestinians, and that Israel must stop its attacks in order for peace efforts to succeed. Speaking to lawmakers from his party, Erdoğan said Israel remained the main obstacle to peace in Gaza despite a plan by Trump. Ceasefire talks in Egypt, to which Turkish officials are attending, are critical, he said.
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Erdoğan said in a transcript shared by his office on Wednesday that Trump had asked Turkey to “persuade” Hamas to accept his plan for ending the Gaza war. “Both during our visit to the United States and in our most recent phone call, we explained to Mr Trump how a solution could be achieved in Palestine. He specifically requested that we meet with Hamas and persuade them,” Erdoğan told Turkish journalists on board a plane returning from Azerbaijan.
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Israel has disputed assertations by a UN children’s agency official that it had repeatedly denied permission to transfer incubators from an evacuated hospital in northern Gaza, adding to strain on overcrowded hospitals farther south where newborn babies are now sharing oxygen masks. James Elder, Unicef spokesperson, described mothers and babies lining the corridor floors of Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, and said that premature babies were being forced to share oxygen masks and beds.
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The Gaza health ministry said Israeli fire had killed at least eight people across the territory in the past 24 hours, the lowest death toll it has reported in the past week.
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Six South African activists who were detained by Israel while attempting to reach Gaza as part of an aid flotilla said on Wednesday that they were subjected to harsher treatment than other detainees because of South Africa’s role in a genocide case against Israel. Speaking after their return, the activists, which include the grandson of Nelson Mandela, said they were singled out after Israeli guards noticed that they were from South Africa. Two Muslim women among the group said they had their hijabs ripped off their heads and were forced to strip naked in front of Israeli soldiers. Israel’s foreign ministry has vehemently denied any claims of mistreatment, and noted that all activists were given the opportunity to voluntarily be deported without detention.
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A new Gaza-bound aid flotilla has been intercepted by the Israeli army, days after the detention of activists on board vessels bound for the war-torn territory caused international outrage and widespread protests. The Israeli military was jamming signals with at least two boats being boarded, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said on Instagram. Turkey criticised the intervention by Israeli forces as an act of piracy and a violation of international law.
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Five Irish citizens including author Naoise Dolan are among those who been detained by Israeli authorities who have stopped a second wave of boats heading towards Gaza with humanitarian aid. Ireland’s deputy prime minister Simon Harris confirmed the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv was “actively engaged with the situation” and he expected “all detainees will be transferred to Ashdod port for process and from there to a detention facility south of Tel Aviv”.
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A Filipino crew member of a Dutch cargo ship has died from injuries sustained in an attack by Houthi rebels in the Gulf of Aden last week, the Philippine government said on Wednesday. Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the 29 September attack in the busy shipping lane on the MV Minervagracht, causing a fire and injuring two people.
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Islamophobic attacks across the US have risen precipitously in the two years since Hamas’s attack on Israel. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) recorded 8,658 complaints, a record.
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UK prime minister Keir Starmer will order the home secretary to look at further curbs on protests including potential powers to take action against specific inflammatory chants at pro-Palestinian protests. Speaking to reporters en route to Mumbai, the prime minister said Labour was looking at going even further than the measures announced by Shabana Mahmood, which would look at the “cumulative impact” of repeat protests in certain locations.
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South African activists on Gaza flotilla claim harsh treatment by Israel over genocide case
Six South African activists who were detained by Israel while attempting to reach Gaza as part of an aid flotilla said on Wednesday that they were subjected to harsher treatment than other detainees because of South Africa’s role in a genocide case against Israel, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Speaking after their return, the activists, which include the grandson of Nelson Mandela, said they were singled out after Israeli guards noticed that they were from South Africa. Two Muslim women among the group said they had their hijabs ripped off their heads and were forced to strip naked in front of Israeli soldiers.
Since 2023, South Africa has been involved in a highly contentious case in the United Nations’ top court accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
Mandla Mandela, the grandson of South Africa’s first black president, said the South African activists on the flotilla were “harshly dealt with” because their country has confronted Israel over its actions in Gaza by launching the case at the International Court of Justice. Their treatment was “because we are a nation that dared through our government to take apartheid Israel to the International Court of Justice and the international criminal court and hold them accountable,” Mandla Mandela said.
Mandla Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela, (C) speaks at a press conference after arriving at the OR Tambo airport on Wednesday with five other South African activists who were on board the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was attacked and detained by Israeli army in international waters. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
South African activists Fatima Hendricks and Zaheera Soomar told reporters at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport on their return that their hijabs were forcibly removed from their heads while they were detained by Israel, which did not happen to other Muslim female activists.
“Both of us were forced behind a screen, our heads pushed against the wall and completely stripped naked in front of Israeli soldiers. This did not happen to other women,” said Soomar. “When they saw our passports, this is how we were treated as South Africans.”
Israel’s foreign ministry has vehemently denied any claims of mistreatment, and noted that all activists were given the opportunity to voluntarily be deported without detention.
The six South Africans were among 450 activists who were arrested as Israeli forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of 42 boats seeking to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and deliver a symbolic amount of aid to the famine-stricken territory. They were detained last week and were brought to Israel.
Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg was among the activists arrested. Thunberg and activists from other countries have also claimed they were mistreated by Israeli guards, claims Israel has rejected as “brazen lies.”
Mandla Mandela has previously been criticised over his alleged support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas and was denied a visa to travel to the UK last year, reports the AP.
Israel has vehemently rejected the allegation it is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and has accused South Africa of being Hamas’ “legal arm” by filing the case.
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Updated at 16.00 CEST
Unicef official says Gaza babies forced to share oxygen masks but Israel challenges UN data
Israel has disputed assertations by a UN children’s agency official on Tuesday that it had repeatedly denied permission to transfer incubators from an evacuated hospital in northern Gaza, adding to strain on overcrowded hospitals farther south where newborn babies are now sharing oxygen masks.
James Elder, Unicef spokesperson, described mothers and babies lining the corridor floors of Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, and said that premature babies were being forced to share oxygen masks and beds. Meanwhile, vital equipment is stranded in hospitals that have been shut in the north.
Israel on Wednesday disputed the assertion and said it was allowing the transfer of medical equipment from the north of the territory to its south.
“We’ve been trying to recover incubators from a hospital that was evacuated in the north, and we’ve had four missions denied simply to get those incubators,” he told Reuters by video link from Gaza, referring to supplies now stuck at the damaged al-Rantissi children’s hospital in Gaza City.
At a hospital Elder visited in the south, meanwhile, “in one of the paediatric rooms, there were three babies and three mums on a single bed, one source of oxygen, and the mothers would rotate the oxygen 20 minutes to each child,” he said. “This is the level of desperation mums have now got to.”
Cogat, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza, said the UN’s data was wrong and that hundreds of coordination requests for humanitarian convoys, including the transfer of food, medical equipment, fuel and teams were being approved.
A Palestinian medic checks on a prematurely born baby lying in an incubator at the neonatal intensive care unit of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP
“The transfer of medical equipment from hospitals in the north to those in the south is being facilitated in accordance with hospital requests,” Cogat said.
The UN humanitarian office said on Tuesday that Israel had either denied or impeded 45% of its 8,000 requested humanitarian missions within Gaza since 7 October 2023.
Unicef has called for the evacuation of ill and premature babies remaining in northern Gaza hospitals. The World Health Organization (WHO) transferred three of them last week to a hospital farther south, but said one died before the mission.
Only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are now even partially functional, the WHO says.
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Updated at 15.30 CEST
The Gaza health ministry said Israeli fire had killed at least eight people across the territory in the past 24 hours, the lowest death toll it has reported in the past week.
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US secretary of state Marco Rubio is expected to attend a ministerial meeting on Thursday in Paris with European, Arab and other states to discuss Gaza’s postwar transition, three diplomatic sources said on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
The meeting, which will be held in parallel with the negotiations in Egypt, is intended to discuss how to implement Donald Trump’s plan and assess countries’ collective commitments.
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My colleague Stephen Starr reports that Islamophobic attacks across the US have risen precipitously in the two years since Hamas’s attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, and the ensuing destruction Israel has unleashed on Gaza that has killed more than 67,000 people and devastated the Strip. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) recorded 8,658 complaints, a record.
Reports of antisemitism have also surged in recent years – a report released on Sunday found that more than half of American Jews say they have faced antisemitism in the past year. Data is difficult to come by because some sources tracking antisemitism don’t make clear distinctions between anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish hate. However, synagogues have widely reported increasing their security budgets over violent threats, and Jewish institutions are especially unnerved after two people were killed in an attack on a UK synagogue last week.
You can read the full story here:
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Reuters is reporting that Gaza’s Islamic Jihad group, which is smaller than Hamas and also holds Israeli hostages, will join the talks today.
Hamas wants a permanent, comprehensive ceasefire, a complete pullout of Israeli forces and the immediate start of a comprehensive reconstruction process under the supervision of a Palestinian “national technocratic body”.
Israel, for its part, wants Hamas to disarm, which the group rejects. Hamas has said it won’t hand over its weapons until a Palestinian state has been established.
US officials suggest they want to initially focus talks on a halt to the fighting and the logistics of how the Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinian detainees in Israel would be freed.
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Updated at 13.34 CEST
Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires:
People take part in a demonstration outside the head office of Ultra Precision Control Systems in Cheltenham, part of a protest by pro-Palestine campaigners at sites across the country supplying F-35 fighter jet parts used by Israel to bombard the Gaza Strip. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PANkosi Zwelivelile ‘Mandla’ Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela, who was among the six South African nationals and flotilla activists detained by Israeli forces, gestures to supporters and family members upon his return home in Johannesburg. Photograph: Kim Ludbrook/EPAA man reacts during a ceremony to mark the two-year anniversary of the deadly 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening. Photograph: Shir Torem/ReutersSmoke rises to the sky after an Israeli military strike in the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel on Wednesday. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/APShare
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday it was neither fair nor realistic to put the burden of achieving peace in Gaza solely on Hamas and Palestinians, and that Israel must stop its attacks in order for peace efforts to succeed, reports Reuters.
Speaking to lawmakers from his party, Erdoğan said Israel remained the main obstacle to peace in Gaza despite a plan by US president Donald Trump. Ceasefire talks in Egypt, to which Turkish officials are attending, are critical, he said.
“Peace is not a bird with a single wing. Putting the entire burden of peace on Hamas and Palestinians is not a fair, correct or realistic approach,” he said, repeating his claim that Hamas is a “resistance group”.
ShareJessica Elgot
UK prime minister Keir Starmer will order the home secretary to look at further curbs on protests including potential powers to take action against specific inflammatory chants at pro-Palestinian protests.
Speaking to reporters en route to Mumbai, the prime minister said Labour was looking at going even further than the measures announced by Shabana Mahmood, which would look at the “cumulative impact” of repeat protests in certain locations.
The proposals have been attacked by civil liberties group over the threats the potential restrictions pose to the right to protest. But after a terror attack on a Manchester synagogue, Starmer is also under pressure to go further, especially over chants that could invoke violence, such as “globalise the intifada”.
Over the weekend, Mahmood said the new laws would allow police officers to consider the cumulative impact of protest when deciding whether or not they are lawful. Protests could be re-routed or even barred altogether if their impact was considered too disruptive.
‘I’m 73 and never hurt a fly’: mass arrests at Palestine Action protest – video
But Starmer said there was more that could be done, specifically to address the small minority of protesters on pro-Gaza marches who he suggested engaged in antisemitic hate. He said:
I’ve asked the home secretary to look more broadly at what other powers are available, how they’re being used and whether they should be changed in any way. I think we need to go further than that in relation to some of the chants that are going on at some of these protests.
Starmer also suggested that police forces could take further steps themselves:
That has to be part of the review that we carry into what powers do we have and how they’re being exercised. And then the question of do any of these powers therefore need to be changed or enhanced?
And that’s the exercise we’re going through. But we are talking at length to leaders of the Jewish community about this, as you would expect.
Starmer said the review would take in all of the government’s current powers over public order. He said:
I think we need to review more broadly public order powers and there will be a series of actions that we will agree in due course across Whitehall.
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Updated at 12.11 CEST
Lisa O’Carroll
Five Irish citizens including author Naoise Dolan are among those who been detained by Israeli authorities who have stopped a second wave of boats heading towards Gaza with humanitarian aid.
They have been part of the nine-strong Thousands Madleens flotilla which were intercepted around 5am this morning.
In a piece written for the Guardian before she was detained, Nolan said her resolve and that of six others on the boat had not been dented. “Palestinians do not yet have freedom, and our own freedoms will be compromised until they do,” she wrote.
Also on board with Irish parliamentarian Barry Heneghan, Fionn Macarthur, Veronica O’Keane and Mutaz Jadaan, a dual Irish-Jordanian citizen.
Ireland’s deputy prime minister Simon Harris confirmed the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv was “actively engaged with the situation” and he expected “all detainees will be transferred to Ashdod port for process and from there to a detention facility south of Tel Aviv”. He was due to receive an update from the Israeli ambassador later this morning.
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Hamas condemns Israeli minister’s visit to al-Aqsa compound as ‘deliberate provocation’
Hamas have condemned Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to al-Aqsa compound on Wednesday as a “deliberate provocation”. Hamas wrote in a statement:
This deliberate provocation … reflects the fascist mentality governing the [Israeli] government, which intentionally violates the sanctity of al-Aqsa and the feelings of Muslims worldwide.
Israel’s far-right national security minister prayed at al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem on Wednesday and called on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pursue “complete victory” over Hamas in Gaza.
According to Reuters, in a video on the edge of one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East, Ben-Gvir said that two years after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war, Israel was “winning” at the Jerusalem compound known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
A second video showed him praying at the compound, in a fresh challenge to a decades-old understanding which allows only Muslim worship at the site.
A screengrab from a video shows Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir at the al-Aqsa mosque compound on Wednesday. Photograph: Jewish Power/Reuters
Ben-Gvir said in the video released by his Jewish Power party:
Every house in Gaza has a picture of the Temple Mount, and today, two years later, we are winning on the Temple Mount. We are the owners of the Temple Mount.
I only pray that our prime minister will allow a complete victory in Gaza as well – to destroy Hamas, with God’s help we will return the hostages, and we will win a complete victory.
His remarks were released as Israel and Hamas are deep in indirect negotiations in Egypt to release all remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza and end the war there.
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Updated at 11.46 CEST
