© 2025 WFAE

Mailing Address:
WFAE 90.7
P.O. Box 896890
Charlotte, NC 28289-6890
Tax ID: 56-1803808
90.7 Charlotte 93.7 Southern Pines 90.3 Hickory 106.1 Laurinburg
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

First Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners freed in ceasefire deal with Hamas

The three released Israeli hostages, who had been abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Palestinian militants, exit a van before boarding an Israeli Air Force military transport helicopter near Reim in southern Israel on Jan. 19 as part of a ceasefire deal.
Gil Cohen-Magen
/
AFP via Getty Images
The three released Israeli hostages, who had been abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Palestinian militants, exit a van before boarding an Israeli Air Force military transport helicopter near Reim in southern Israel on Jan. 19 as part of a ceasefire deal.

Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a ceasefire between Israel's military and Hamas has begun.

The Israeli government announced the ceasefire with Hamas would take effect at 11:15 local time (4:15 am US ET) — around three hours after the originally scheduled time for hostilities to cease.

The ceasefire was supposed to have gone into effect at 8:30 a.m. Sunday, but before then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Israel did not consider the terms of the agreement valid and enforceable until Hamas had handed over a list of the names of hostages to be released today. Under the agreement, Hamas was supposed to hand them over on Saturday.

A statement issued on Telegram after that initial deadline by the Al Qassem Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, identified three Israeli women the group would release on Sunday, part of the group of nearly 100 hostages still believed to be held by Hamas.

The Israeli government confirmed it had received a list of hostages, and that family members were being notified.

Throughout the morning, surveillance drones flew over Gaza and the Israeli military reported strikes in the territory. NPR confirmed that a jeep belonging to the Al Qassem Brigades was struck.

The spokesman for Gaza's Hamas-controlled civil defense, Mahmoud Basal, said Israeli attacks had killed a total of 19 people across various parts of the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning.

The Israeli military also said it carried out a special operation alongside the country's domestic intelligence service that helped recover the body of an infantry soldier called Oron Shaul. He had been killed during clashes with Hamas in 2014. The group is still holding 97 abductees inside Gaza. Most of those were seized on Oct. 7, 2023, but others were taken hostage in the preceding decade, and a substantial number are no longer alive.

In Jerusalem, the far-right Otzma Yehudit party released a statement saying its leader, former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was making good on his threat to leave Netanyahu's governing coalition, and he would take his party's ministers with him. The statement called the ceasefire deal a "victory for terrorism."

Copyright 2025 NPR

Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter

Select Your Email Format

Jerome Socolovsky
Jerome Socolovsky is the Audio Storytelling Specialist for NPR Training. He has been a reporter and editor for more than two decades, mostly overseas. Socolovsky filed stories for NPR on bullfighting, bullet trains, the Madrid bombings and much more from Spain between 2002 and 2010. He has also been a foreign and international justice correspondent for The Associated Press, religion reporter for the Voice of America and editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. He won the Religion News Association's TV reporting award in 2013 and 2014 and an honorable mention from the Association of International Broadcasters in 2011. Socolovsky speaks five languages in addition to his native Spanish and English. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and graduate degrees from Hebrew University and the Harvard Kennedy School. He's also a sculler and a home DIY nut.