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Israeli troops killed 22 people in south Lebanon on Sunday including a soldier, health officials said, as residents tried to return home on the day Israel was meant to withdraw under a truce deal.The withdrawal deadline is part of a ceasefire agreement reached two months ago that ended Israel’s war with Iran-backed Hezbollah, which had left the Lebanese militant group weakened.The deal that took effect on November 27 said the Lebanese army was to deploy alongside UN peacekeepers in the south as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period that ends on Sunday.The parties have traded blame for the delay in implementing the agreement, and on Friday Israel said it would keep troops across the border in south Lebanon beyond the pullout date.Lebanon’s health ministry said on Sunday that Israeli forces opened fire on “citizens who were trying to return to their villages that are still under (Israeli) occupation”.It said 22 people including six women and a soldier were killed and 124 more wounded. The Lebanese army also announced the soldier’s death and said another had been wounded.The Israeli military said in a statement that its “troops operating in southern Lebanon fired warning shots to remove threats” where “suspects were identified approaching the troops”.It added that “a number of suspects… that posed an imminent threat to the troops were apprehended”.AFP journalists said convoys of vehicles carrying hundreds of people, some flying yellow Hezbollah flags, were trying to get to several border villages.”We will return to our villages and the Israeli enemy will leave,” even if it costs lives, said Ali Harb, a 27-year-old trying to go to Kfar Kila.A joint statement from the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the UNIFIL peacekeeping mission acknowledged that “conditions are not yet in place for the safe return of citizens to their villages”.- ‘Glorious day’ -An AFP correspondent saw hundreds of people gather for a collective prayer on a main road in the border town of Bint Jbeil, followed by a march to some nearby villages.Residents could also be seen heading on foot and by motorbike towards the devastated border town of Mays al-Jabal, where Israeli troops are still stationed.Some held up portraits of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, slain in an Israeli attack in late September, while women dressed in black carried photos of family members killed in the war.Hezbollah hailed a “glorious day” and praised residents’ “deep attachment to their land” in a statement on Sunday.The group also called on the backers of the ceasefire agreement — which includes the United States and France — to “assume their responsibilities in the face of these violations and crimes of the Israeli enemy”.Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati earlier called on the foreign mediators “to force the Israeli enemy to withdraw”.Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee had issued a message earlier on Sunday to residents of more than 60 villages in southern Lebanon telling them not to return.Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, the former army chief who took office earlier this month, called on residents to keep a cool head and “trust the Lebanese army” which sought their safe return home.In a statement late Sunday, the Lebanese army said it would “continue to accompany residents” returning to the south and “protect them from Israeli attacks”.- Truce holding -Israeli forces have left coastal areas of southern Lebanon but are still present in areas further east.The ceasefire deal stipulates that Hezbollah pull back its forces north of the Litani River — about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border — and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that the “agreement has not yet been fully enforced by the Lebanese state”, so the military’s withdrawal would continue beyond the Sunday deadline.French President Emmanuel Macron told Netanyahu in a telephone call on Sunday to “withdraw his forces still present in Lebanon” and stressed the importance of restoring Lebanese state authority nationwide, his office said.The truce has generally held since November, despite repeated accusations of violations.It ended two months of full-scale war that had followed nearly a year of low-intensity exchanges.Hezbollah began trading cross-border fire with the Israeli army the day after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by its Palestinian ally Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza.

Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and his Hamas rivals on Sunday rejected proposals to displace people from Gaza after US President Donald Trump’s idea to “clean out” the war-torn territory.Meanwhile, Palestinian sources said a dispute linked to hostage-prisoner swaps under the Israel-Hamas truce deal may be nearing a solution that could possibly allow vast crowds of Palestinians jammed a coastal road return to northern Gaza.The latest swap saw four Israeli women hostages, all soldiers, and 200 Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday to joyful scenes, in the second such exchange during the fragile truce entering its second week.After 15 months of war, Trump said Gaza had become a “demolition site”, adding he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory.”I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters, adding he expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said that “our rejection of the displacement of Palestinians is firm and will not change. Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians.”Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants. Jordan is already home to around 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.”We say to Trump and the whole world: we will not leave Palestine or Gaza, no matter what happens,” said displaced Gaza resident Rashad al-Naji.Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert, which Sisi said could jeopardise the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.”You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza, whose population is about 2.4 million.Moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be done “temporarily or could be long term”, he added.- ‘Deplorable’ -Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP that Palestinians would “foil such projects”, as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades”.Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “deplorable” and said it encouraged “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land”.President Abbas “expressed strong rejection and condemnation of any projects” aimed at displacing Palestinians from Gaza, a statement from his office said.Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed the truce deal and has voiced support for re-establishing Israeli settlements in Gaza, said Trump’s suggestion of “helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea”.Almost all Gazans have been displaced by the war that began after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.The United Nations says close to 70 percent of the territory’s buildings are damaged or destroyed.On Sunday, cars and carts loaded with belongings jammed a road near the Netzarim Corridor that Israel has blocked, preventing the expected return of hundreds of thousands of people to northern Gaza.Israel announced on Saturday it would prevent Palestinians’ passage until the release of Arbel Yehud, a civilian woman hostage who Netanyahu’s office said “was supposed to be released”.- Waiting to enter -On Sunday, Netanyahu’s office said that by not releasing her on Saturday and not providing a “detailed list of all hostages’ statuses”, Hamas had committed truce violations.Hamas later said that blocking returns to the north also amounted to a truce violation, adding it had provided “all the necessary guarantees” for Yehud’s release.Two Palestinian sources later told AFP Yehud will be handed over within days.”The crisis has been resolved,” said a Palestinian source familiar with the issue.Israel has yet to comment.During the first phase of the Gaza truce, 33 hostages should be freed in staggered releases over six weeks in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.The truce has brought a surge of food, fuel medicines and other aid into rubble-strewn Gaza, but the UN says “the humanitarian situation remains dire”.Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, 87 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 47,306 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.Israel has also reached a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon which stipulates that Israeli forces must withdraw by a Sunday deadline.The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli troops killed nearly two dozen people on Sunday as hundreds of residents tried to return to their homes in southern Lebanon.The Israeli army said soldiers “fired warning shots” against “suspects were identified approaching the troops”.burs/imm/ami

Sudan’s army chief visited on Sunday his headquarters in the capital Khartoum, two days after forces recaptured the complex, which paramilitaries had encircled since the war erupted in April 2023.”Our forces are in their best condition,” Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told army commanders at the headquarters close to the city centre and airport.The army’s recapture of the General Command of the Armed Forces is its biggest victory in the capital since reclaiming Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city on the Nile’s west bank, nearly a year ago.In a statement on Friday, the army said it had merged troops stationed in Khartoum North (Bahri) and Omdurman with forces at the headquarters, breaking the siege of both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command, just south across the Nile River.Since the early days of the war, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) quickly spread through Khartoum, the military had to supply its troops inside the headquarters via airdrops.Burhan was himself trapped inside for four months before emerging in August 2023 and fleeing to the coastal city of Port Sudan.The recapture of the headquarters follows other gains for the army.Earlier this month, troops regained control of Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.- ‘Disregard for human life’ -With the army gaining ground in central Sudan, the RSF has set its sights on consolidating its hold on Darfur, where it controls every state capital except El-Fasher.Despite besieging it since May, the paramilitary has not managed to wrest control of the city from the army and its allied militias.Days after it issued an ultimatum demanding army forces and their allies leave the North Darfur state capital, an attack on the city’s Saudi Hospital on Friday killed 70 people and injured dozens, the United Nations said on Sunday.”The attack, reportedly carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the only functional hospital in El-Fasher, is a shocking violation of international humanitarian law,” the UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said Sunday.”The alarming disregard for human life is unacceptable,” said the UN’s most senior official in Sudan.The RSF on Sunday accused the army and its allies of striking the hospital.The late Friday drone strike destroyed the hospital’s emergency building, a medical source told AFP.World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X the “appalling” attack took place while “the hospital was packed with patients receiving care”.Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas, with the RSF specifically accused of ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.The United States announced sanctions this month against RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, accusing his group of committing genocide.A week later, it also imposed sanctions against Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals, as well as using food deprivation as a weapon of war.- ‘The best medicine is peace’ -The war in Sudan has unleashed a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.Tens of thousands of people have been killed and, according to the United Nations, more than 12 million uprooted.Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.Particularly in the country’s western Darfur region and in Kordofan in the south, families have been forced to eat grass, animal fodder and peanut shells to survive.”Above all, Sudan’s people need peace. The best medicine is peace,” Ghebreyesus said.During Sunday prayers in Rome, Pope Francis lamented how the country has become the site of “the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world”.He called on both sides to end the fighting and urged the international community to “help the belligerents find paths to peace soon”.

Palestinian woman Latifa Abu Hamid said she was filled with “indescribable joy” when she heard that her three sons had been freed from Israeli prisons, even though they had been forced into exile.The three released Saturday were among dozens of inmates freed in exchange for Israeli hostages held by Gaza militants, under the truce agreement between Israel and Hamas that has halted the war in the Palestinian territory.Like Abu Hamid’s sons, many Palestinians released by Israel were not sent home but deported.The 74-year-old resident of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has had five of her 10 children detained by Israel, some for decades, over their involvement in armed resistance.Her three sons Nasr, 50, Sharif, 45, and Mohammed, 35, were released on Saturday from a prison in southern Israel’s Negev desert.”I’m so happy. I spoke to them… I heard their voices,” said Abu Hamid.”Of course, I would prefer them to live with us, to be here so we could enjoy their presence,” she said.Out of 200 prisoners released on Saturday, nearly all Palestinian but including one Jordanian, 70 were handed over to Egypt, and some plan to settle in Qatar or another third country.- ‘Never lost hope’ -Abu Hamid’s living room is adorned with large painted portraits of each family member and photo montages showing her flashing a victory sign and surrounded by her sons.Certificates of detention were displayed like diplomas.Another photograph showed her in a dress decorated with the faces of her sons alongside an image of the Dome of the Rock, the iconic Muslim shrine in the Israeli-annexed Old City of Jerusalem.”For more than 40 years, I’ve been visiting my sons in prison — more than half my life — and I’ve never lost hope of seeing them free,” she said.Not that three are out of jail, “it’s an indescribable joy,” said the mother.”But the joy remains incomplete because my son Islam and the rest of the prisoners are still” locked up, she added.One of her sons, 38-year-old Islam, has been sentenced to life like his three brothers, but is not on Israel’s list of prisoners eligible for release under the Gaza truce agreement.Abu Hamid said Islam killed an Israeli soldier with a stone during an army raid on the Al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah, where the family once lived.The eldest, Naser, was one of the founders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group established during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.He died of cancer in detention and Israel has never returned his body, said the mother.Another son, a member of the militant group Islamic Jihad, was killed by the Israeli military in 1994.- ‘Time to find peace’ -Abu Hamid recounted how her home in Al-Amari camp had been destroyed by the Israeli army as part of a policy of reprisals against the families of Palestinians responsible for deadly attacks on Israelis, a measure condemned by the UN and human rights organisations.Her daughter-in-law Alaa Abu Hamid, Naser’s wife, said that “we’ve been through extremely difficult days.””The time has finally come to find peace and regain family stability.”Her mother-in-law noted, however, that three of her grandchildren could not attend the large family gathering planned to celebrate the releases.They, too, are in detention.It is not uncommon for Palestinian families to have multiple members imprisoned. Since October 7, 2023, thousands of people have been detained in the West Bank by Israel, bringing the total number of Palestinian detainees to over 10,000, according to rights groups.The ongoing first phase of the truce agreement between Israel and Hamas stipulates the release of around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, including more than 230 serving life sentences, in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages held in Gaza.The 42-day truce has so far resulted in the release of seven Israeli hostages in exchange for 290 prisoners freed by Israel.Despite the release of three of her sons, Latifa Abu Hamid said she couldn’t “fully savour” her happiness “knowing that other prisoners remain behind bars”.”Even if Islam is freed, I won’t be truly happy until all of them are released.”

Iran and Afghanistan called for increased cooperation during a trip to Kabul on Sunday by Tehran’s foreign minister, the highest-level Iranian official to visit the Afghan capital since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021.Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with his Afghan counterpart, Amir Khan Muttaqi, and Taliban government Prime Minister Hassan Akhund during a one-day visit to discuss relations between the neighbouring countries that spar over issues including migration and water resources.The two sides covered economic cooperation, the situation of Afghan migrants in Iran, border issues and water rights, an Afghan foreign ministry statement said.Araghchi praised the countries’ economic, trade and political relations in his talks with Muttaqi, according to an Iranian statement, adding he hoped that “during this trip we will be able to further expand the ties in line with the national interests of both sides”, emphasising security and economic arenas.Muttaqi “expressed hope that (Araghchi’s) visit to Kabul would create further momentum in relations between the two countries and they would enter a new phase of bilateral relations”, the Afghan foreign ministry said.Many countries closed their embassies in Kabul or downgraded diplomatic relations after the Taliban takeover that ousted the US-backed government, but Iran has maintained active diplomatic ties with Afghanistan’s new rulers, though it has yet to officially recognise the Taliban government. Several Iranian delegations have visited Afghanistan over the years, including a parliamentary delegation in August 2023 to discuss water rights. – Water and migration -Tensions between the countries have intensified in recent years over water resources and the construction of dams on the Helmand and Harirud rivers. Araghchi said the issues of water and migration demanded expanded cooperation and called for the full implementation of bilateral water treaties, according to an Afghan foreign ministry statement.Muttaqi said the region was suffering from climate change-induced drought and that Taliban authorities were “trying to ensure that water reaches both sides” of the Iran-Afghanistan border.Muttaqi and Akhund also called for the situation of Afghan migrants in Iran to be improved and for their “dignified” return to Afghanistan.Afghans returning from Iran have accused Iranian authorities of harassment, wrongful deportation and physical abuse.Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says Tehran is repatriating illegal nationals to their country “in a respectful manner”. Iran shares more than 900 kilometres (560 miles) of border with Afghanistan, and the Islamic republic hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world — mostly Afghans fleeing decades of war.The flow of Afghan immigrants has increased since the Taliban took power.Iranian media announced in September the building of a wall along more than 10 kilometres of the eastern border with Afghanistan, the main entry point for migrants.Officials said at the time that additional methods to fortify the border including barbed wire and water-filled ditches to counter the “smuggling of fuel and goods, especially drugs”, and to prevent “illegal immigration”.

Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad reacted defiantly on Sunday to US President Donald Trump’s idea to “clean out” Gaza, as a fragile truce aimed at permanently ending the war entered its second week.There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but a far-right minister welcomed Trump’s “great” idea.Meanwhile, a dispute linked to the latest hostage-prisoner swap under the truce deal led to vast crowds of Palestinians jamming a coastal road after they were blocked from returning to the territory’s north.The swap saw four Israeli women hostages, all soldiers, and 200 Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday to joyful scenes, in the second such exchange so far.After 15 months of war, Trump said Gaza had become a “demolition site”, adding he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory. “I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters, adding he expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said that “our rejection of the displacement of Palestinians is firm and will not change. Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians.”Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants.For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert, which Sisi said could jeopardise the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.Jordan is already home to around 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.”You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza, whose population is about 2.4 million.”I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said.Moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be done “temporarily or could be long term”, he added.- ‘Deplorable’ -Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP that Palestinians would “foil such projects”, as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades”.Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “deplorable” and said it encouraged “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land”.But far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed the truce deal and has voiced support for re-establishing Israeli settlements in Gaza, said Trump’s suggestion of “helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea”.Almost all Gazans have been displaced by the war that began after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.The United Nations says close to 70 percent of the territory’s buildings are damaged or destroyed.On Sunday, cars and carts loaded with belongings jammed a road near the Netzarim Corridor that Israel has blocked, preventing the expected return of hundreds of thousands of people to northern Gaza.Israel announced on Saturday it would prevent Palestinians’ passage until the release of Arbel Yehud, a civilian woman hostage who Netanyahu’s office said “was supposed to be released”.- Waiting to enter -On Sunday, Netanyahu’s office said that by not releasing her on Saturday and not providing a “detailed list of all hostages’ statuses”, Hamas had committed truce violations.Hamas later said that blocking returns to the north also amounted to a truce violation, adding it had provided “all the necessary guarantees” for Yehud’s release.During the first phase of the Gaza truce, 33 hostages should be freed in staggered releases over six weeks in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.The hospital that received the first three hostages Hamas released a week ago said the women were all discharged on Sunday.The truce has brought a surge of food, fuel medicines and other aid into rubble-strewn Gaza, but the UN says “the humanitarian situation remains dire”.Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, 87 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 47,306 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.Israel has also reached a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon which stipulates that Israeli forces must withdraw by a Sunday deadline.The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli troops killed more than a dozen people on Sunday as hundreds of residents tried to return to their homes in southern Lebanon.The Israeli army said soldiers “fired warning shots” against “suspects were identified approaching the troops”.burs/imm/ami

A vast crowd of Gazans massed near an Israeli military barrier preventing them from heading to their homes in the north on Sunday amid a row between Hamas and Israel over the terms of their ceasefire deal.Aerial footage from AFPTV showed the crowd fanning out for hundreds of metres from a junction on a coastal road in the Nuseirat area and spilling onto a nearby beach.Dotted among the crowd were water tankers, ambulances, donkey carts, TV crews and their vehicles, and dozens of tents in which displaced Gazans sat and waited for permission to continue their journey.AFP journalists at the scene said the mass of people stretched for three kilometres (1.9 miles) along Al-Rashid Road, with Gaza police preventing civilians from getting close to the Israelis, whose jets and drones flew overhead.Dozens of displaced people camped in the garden of a bombed-out villa, some of them milling around in its empty swimming pool.Whole families sat on the side of the road waiting for news, their belongings bundled up in blankets or crammed into overstuffed backpacks.Saeed Abu Sharia, 49, said he arrived on Saturday night and slept outside while his wife, mother and children stayed in his car for warmth.”I burned the tent last night because it was a symbol of misery and humiliation,” he said. Fifty of his relatives were killed in the 15-month war, said Abu Sharia, whose home was also destroyed.  – Belongings piled high -A few kilometres inland, hundreds of Palestinian families were waiting next to their cars in a long traffic jam on Salah al-Din Street, with everything they owned piled in great mounds atop their vehicles and strapped down tight.”Tens of thousands of displaced people are waiting near the Netzarim Corridor to return to the northern Gaza Strip,” Gaza civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP, with Israel refusing to allow them through in a dispute over a hostage release. Ismail al-Thawabtah, director general of the government media office in Hamas-run Gaza, also said there were tens of thousands waiting at the junction.He put the total number of Gazans wanting to return to the north at “between 615,000 and 650,000”, with two-thirds of them likely to use the coastal road.The Netzarim Corridor is a seven-kilometre strip of land militarised by Israel that bisects the Gaza Strip from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea. The corridor cuts off the north from the rest of the territory.Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the terms of the ceasefire, which began a week ago.As part of the deal, Israel was due to let displaced Gazans cross the corridor and return to their homes, with Hamas officials saying this would happen on Saturday.Israel, however, accused Hamas of reneging on the deal by not releasing hostage Arbel Yehud on Saturday. Yehud was one the 251 hostages seized during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.As a civilian woman, Yehud “was supposed to be released” as part of the second hostage-prisoner swap under the truce deal, a statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.”Israel will not allow the passage of Gazans to the northern part of the Gaza Strip until the release of civilian Arbel Yehud… is arranged,” it added.Two Hamas sources told AFP on Saturday that Yehud was “alive and in good health”, with one source saying she would be “released as part of the third swap set for next Saturday”, on February 1.Hamas on Sunday said Israel blocking returns to the north amounted to a truce violation, adding it has provided “all the necessary guarantees” for Yehud’s release.On the other side of the corridor in north Gaza was Bashar Naser, a 28-year-old from Jabalia, who had been waiting for his relatives since early morning.”We want to welcome them and celebrate… this is a great joy.”