Hamas Releases Video of Two More Hostages

Hamas released a video of two hostages on Saturday that appeared to have been made recently and offered indications that they were still alive.

Omri Miran, 47, an Israeli, and Keith Siegel, 64, an Israeli American, were both taken captive in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, but neither had been reported alive since late November.

The video was released amid renewed efforts to break a deadlock in the indirect talks between Israel and Hamas aimed at achieving a cease-fire and the release of hostages held in Gaza. The talks are also happening as Israel is signaling that it may be gearing up to invade Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, one of the last cities still under Hamas control.

In the video, Mr. Miran's and Mr. Siegel's comments suggested the footage had been made in recent days. They both spoke about the Passover holiday, which will end on Tuesday, and Mr. Miran, who also holds Hungarian citizenship, said he had been held hostage for 202 days. The Oct. 7 attack took place 204 days ago.

The video was the second this week appearing to contain proof of life for a hostage. On Wednesday, the militant group published a video of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American dual citizen who has also been held hostage since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

Rights groups and international law experts say that a hostage video is, by definition, made under duress, and that the statements in it are usually coerced. Israeli officials have called the videos a form of "psychological warfare," and experts say their production can constitute a war crime.

Moshe Emilio Lavi, the brother-in-law of Mr. Miran, said that seeing Mr. Miran alive gave him hope, but he emphasized that it was incumbent upon Israel, Hamas and mediating countries to conclude a deal that would bring the hostages home.

"Time is of the essence," he said in a phone interview. "We need to act now. These people have been deprived of sunlight, food and adequate sanitary conditions. These are vulnerable people."

Mr. Lavi, 35, a management consultant based in New York City, has advocated the release of hostages in meetings with members of Congress and State Department officials.

Ilan Siegel, the daughter of Mr. Siegel, said watching the video showed "how much we must reach a deal as soon as possible and bring everyone home."

"I demand that the leaders of this country watch this video and see their father crying out for help," Ms. Siegel said in a recorded statement distributed to reporters. She was sitting alongside her mother, Aviva, who was held hostage for more than 50 days before being released in November.

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The circumstances of how the video of the hostages was filmed were unclear, and the footage appears to have been edited. It was released on the Telegram channel of Hamas's military wing at about 6 p.m. in Israel.

Israeli officials believe there are about 130 hostages remaining in Gaza, and Israeli intelligence officers have concluded that at least 30 of those have died in captivity.

In recent weeks, the negotiations between Israel and Hamas have stalled amid disputes over an Israeli withdrawal of forces and the length of a halt in the fighting. Hamas has demanded a permanent cease-fire, whereas Israel has expressed openness to a temporary pause.

Another key sticking point is whether Israel will allow displaced Palestinians to return to the north of Gaza. Hamas officials have said Palestinians should be able to go back en masse, while Israeli officials have said Israel wants to put limits on who can return, where and how.

— Adam Rasgon Reporting from Jerusalem

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An Emirati ship with 400 tons of food intended for the Gaza Strip set sail from Cyprus on Saturday morning, according to a United Arab Emirates official and American Near East Refugee Aid, or Anera, an aid organization operating in Gaza.

It was unclear when the Emirati ship would arrive or where it would dock. The roughly 250-mile journey from Cyprus to Gaza normally takes about 15 hours, but it could take up to a couple of days depending on the weather, the weight of the cargo and the type of vessel. Previous shipments were unloaded at a hastily constructed jetty south of Gaza City.

"This is hopefully the first of many ship- and truckloads of thousands of tons of aid to come," Sean Carroll, the president of Anera, said in a statement. He added that much of the food will be brought to northern Gaza, where experts have warned of a looming famine.

A correction was made on 

April 27, 2002

: 

An earlier version of this item incorrectly stated that an aid ship was traveling to Gaza. It is docking in Ashdod, Israel, and the aid will be delivered to Gaza.

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Under intense international scrutiny, Israel has made efforts this month to expedite the flow of aid into Gaza, but one expert said it was too early to say if the rise in aid could be sustained long enough to avoid a famine.

Israel's efforts — which include opening new aid routes — have been acknowledged in the last week by the Biden administration and international aid officials. More aid trucks appear to be reaching Gaza, particularly the north.

The increased levels of aid are a good sign, but it is too early to say that looming famine, which experts have warned about for weeks, is no longer a risk, Arif Husain, the chief economist at the United Nations World Food Program, said.

"If we see this progress continue not for weeks, but months, that will help," Mr. Husain said, adding that the main need was for more food, water and medicine.

"This cannot just happen for a day or a week — it has to happen every single day for the foreseeable future," he added. "If we can do this, then we can ease the pain, we can avert famine."

The new moves have come as Israel faces growing international pressure to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Aid groups have long complained that only a trickle of aid is entering the enclave, blaming harsh war conditions, strict inspections and limits on the number of crossing points. Israel has said the restrictions are necessary to ensure that supplies do not fall into the hands of Hamas.

Israel announced it would open more aid routes after its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke with President Biden by phone in early April, in the wake of an Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, a disaster relief organization. Aid has since reached Gaza through new avenues, including a partially functioning border crossing into northern Gaza and the port of Ashdod, around 20 miles north of the enclave.

Infrastructure work is underway to make the northern crossing permanent and to open another one nearby, Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories and that liaises with international organizations, said.

About 100 trucks a day are now reaching the northern half of the strip via two main crossing points in the south, according to Israeli and American officials, compared with a total of 350 trucks during nearly the whole of March.

Flour shipments from the World Food Program have started to arrive via Ashdod, Mr. Husain said, increasing the scale and efficiency of flour deliveries into northern Gaza, in particular.

Four bakeries reopened in Gaza City this month, in what the Israeli military called a sign of improving conditions. The United Nations shared a video online that showed bags of flour piled high in bakery storerooms and Palestinian children clapping for an aid truck.

In addition, the Jordanian military and government have recently increased the amount of aid arriving in overland convoys, which travel from Jordan through the West Bank and across part of Israel before reaching the southern Gaza border crossings. The Jordanian military carries out its own inspections. Government trucks are inspected by Israel.

A maritime route is also expected to open in the coming weeks, with the United States announcing Thursday that Army engineers had begun construction of a floating pier that could help relief workers deliver as many as two million meals a day. The Israeli military said it would provide security and logistical support for the initiative.

The amount of aid actually reaching Gaza is disputed, with Israel and the United Nations using different methods to track truck deliveries. Israel says the number of trucks entering Gaza daily over the past few weeks has doubled, and a daily average of 400 trucks are now entering the coastal strip, according to Ms. Sasson.

But the United Nations has reported a significantly smaller increase. In the two weeks ending Thursday, the most recent day for which figures were available, it reported an average of 189 trucks entering Gaza each day through the two main crossings in the south of the territory, though the number has fluctuated significantly.

Trucks screened and counted by Israel often enter Gaza only half full, according to U.N. officials, and sometimes it takes longer than a day for trucks to reach warehouses in Gaza, affecting the daily counts.

The U.N.'s top coordinator for humanitarian aid for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, noted this week that Israel had made efforts to increase the entry and distribution of aid, but called for "further definitive and urgent steps" to meet the desperate need.

— Isabel Kershner reporting from Jerusalem

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Hamas said on Saturday that it was reviewing a new Israeli proposal for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, a move that comes amid efforts to break a deadlock in the talks between the armed group and Israel.

The statement came as anticipation was growing of an Israeli invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where more than a million people have been displaced. Humanitarian groups have warned that such an offensive would have catastrophic consequences for civilians.

In a statement, Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, said the group had received an Israeli response to a proposal it delivered to Egyptian and Qatari mediators two weeks ago. Mr. al-Hayya did not provide any details included in the Israeli proposal, but he said Hamas would respond to it after the group finished studying it.

On Friday, a delegation of Egyptian officials visited Israel in an attempt to advance the negotiations between Israel and Hamas, according to an Israeli official familiar with the visit, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to communicate with the media.

In recent weeks, the negotiations aimed at achieving a cease-fire and the release of hostages held in Gaza have stalled amid disputes about an Israeli withdrawal of forces and the length of a halt in the fighting. Hamas has demanded a permanent cease-fire, whereas Israel has expressed openness to a temporary pause.

Another key sticking point is whether Israel will allow displaced Palestinians to return to the north. Hamas officials have said Palestinians should be able to go back en masse, while Israeli officials have said Israel wants to put limits on who can return, where and how.

The impasse has left Palestinians in Gaza to continue to suffer through Israel's pulverizing bombing campaign, which has caused destruction throughout the territory and left more than 34,000 dead, according to the Gaza health ministry. The ministry's figures do not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

It has also prevented Israeli hostages from reuniting with their families, many of whom have become increasingly critical of the Israeli government's failure to secure their loved ones' freedom.

Calls for cease-fire talks have gained urgency as Israel signals that it may go ahead with its invasion of Rafah. Earlier this week, an Israeli military official said that if Israel were to begin an invasion of Rafah, an Israeli-designated "humanitarian zone" along the coast would be expanded to take in more civilians. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The comments were among the first indications of the Israeli military's plans for civilians if it were to launch a major ground offensive in the area.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is expected to travel to Israel next week, a trip that would come as the United States has urged Israel not to undertake a major military operation in Rafah.

Israeli officials have repeatedly said that entering Rafah was necessary in order to fight Hamas battalions there, but Israel's allies have expressed grave concerns about what an invasion would mean for people who have crowded into the city, many of them living in makeshift tents in large encampments.

— Adam Rasgon reporting from Jerusalem

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The United Nations has said that it has closed the case against an employee of its main agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza after claiming that Israel provided no evidence to support its allegations that the worker took part in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack.

In addition, four other cases against employees of the agency, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, were suspended because the information provided by Israel was not sufficient for the United Nations' internal oversight office to proceed with an investigation, the U.N. said. The suspended cases could be reopened if additional evidence is presented, according to UNRWA.

Fourteen staff members remain under investigation, it said.

The United Nations has been conducting investigations into claims by Israel that 19 of its 13,000 staff members in Gaza were involved in the attack and that many more were members of Hamas or its allies. The initial accusations prompted a dozen countries to suspend billions in funding to the agency, which has been a vital lifeline for aid, water and shelter for many in Gaza during the devastating war in Gaza.

Friday's announcement comes the same week that the United Nations released an independent review it commissioned finding that Israel has not provided evidence to support its accusations that many employees of UNRWA were members of armed Palestinian groups. The report did not investigate Israel's accusation that some of the agency's employees were involved in the Oct. 7 assault.

Israel's Foreign Ministry harshly criticized the report and Friday's announcement.

"The claim that Israel did not share information on the UNRWA-Hamas nexus is entirely false," the ministry said in a statement. "UNRWA has been deeply infiltrated by designated terrorist organizations."

The review was commissioned in January, just before Israel initially accused a dozen UNRWA staffers of involvement in the attacks. In March and April, UNRWA said it had received information on seven more staff members.

The United Nations fired the dozen staff members in the wake of Israel's claims. The U.N. oversight office said on Friday that it was "exploring corrective administrative action" for the employee whose case was closed.

After the independent report was released, Germany said that it would resume funding for UNRWA. Germany, which is the agency's second largest donor after the United States, gave more than $200 million to UNRWA in 2023. A handful of other countries, including Canada, Sweden and Finland, had already resumed funding, saying that UNRWA had taken steps to improve accountability.

The United States, the biggest donor to UNRWA, has not said whether it would restore funding to UNRWA. Gaza is in the middle of a humanitarian crisis after Israel imposed what it called a "complete siege" of the enclave. The United Nations has said that Israel has taken steps to improve the situation, but that far more aid is needed and that famine in Gaza is imminent.

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A heat wave in the Gaza Strip this week, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit the past few days, has not only made life intolerable for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people trying to rebuild their lives in tent cities but has made it hard for some businesses to operate.

By Saturday, the heat had significantly eased and the forecast was for more moderate temperatures in coming days. But the recent highs offered a vision of what the summer most likely holds.

"This hot weather is a challenge for us," said Mohammed Fayyad, a displaced pharmacist who started selling medications from a tent he built out of wooden slabs, curtains and metal scraps at a camp for displaced people in Al-Mawasi.

With no electricity or alternative sources of power, Mr. Fayyad, 32, said that he could not keep the medicines — which he buys from pharmacies that have had to shut down — stored at cool enough temperatures to keep them from being damaged.

"Fifty percent of the medicines for chronic diseases are not available because we do not have any source of power to keep them cool," said Mr. Fayyad, speaking from his makeshift pharmacy that he named after his 3-year-old daughter Julia.

Mr. Fayyad is trying to find ways to generate power for a refrigerator to store medication.

"I hope I can find those solar panels, which are very expensive, to make the options wider for the displaced people," he said.

Mr. Fayyad was displaced with his wife and only daughter from Khan Younis, where they lived and owned a pharmacy. They have been in Al-Mawasi for more than two months. When they recently went back to Khan Younis after the Israeli military withdrew from the area, he found his pharmacy had been burned and looted.

Nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza were forced to flee their homes under Israeli bombardment and military evacuation orders. Many had to live in tents that provided little protection from the cold and rainy months earlier in the war and that offer them no protection against the scalding heat and humid weather now.

Parents across the Gaza Strip are relying on water to keep their children cool when it is already not easy to get. The hot weather is also bringing insects that help spread disease.

"My children were stung by insects and mosquitoes because there is no sanitation around, and sewage is leaking almost everywhere," said Mohammed Abu Hatab, a father of four, including a 7-month-old. His family has been spending their days outside, under the shade of nylon tents, which trap heat and make the tents more unbearable.

"I had to undress my children to their underwear only," said Mr. Abu Hatab, 33. He added: "The tent, the heat wave, and the horror of this war are all a nightmare. How can my children live healthily and safely?"

— Bilal Shbair and Hiba Yazbek reporting from the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem

A drone attack on a large gas field in Iraq's Kurdistan region killed four workers and plunged much of eastern Kurdistan into darkness because it relies on gas to fuel its electrical plants, according to a Kurdistan regional government spokesman.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. While Iranian-backed armed groups have bases in the area, there are many competing interests in Kurdistan, leaving it unclear whether the attacks are part of the larger regional fight between Iran and Israel, which has intensified during the war in Gaza.

The Kurdistan region's president, Nechirvan Barzani, condemned the attack and called on the government in Baghdad to investigate. "These attacks endanger the peace and stability of the country," Mr. Barzani said, adding, "The representatives of the Iraqi federal government must do their duty to prevent these attacks and find the perpetrators from any side and punish them according to the law."

Iraq's joint command in Baghdad issued a statement calling the attack "sabotage," confirming that a drone was used. The statement said Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani had ordered an investigation.

Friday's drone attack was the second so far this year on the Khor Mor field in Sulaymaniyah Province. The last one, in January, did not inflict casualties.

"Four Yemeni workers have been killed, and the field has been severely damaged, which will cause electricity shortages," said Peshawa Hawramani, a spokesman for the Kurdistan regional government.

Almost a million people in Sulaymaniyah Province were left without power, along with thousands more in adjacent provinces. It took about 24 hours to restore electricity after the last attack, but because the damage was greater this time, Kurdish authorities said it could take longer. While hospitals and security services have large generators, many ordinary residents have access only to limited power from shared generators.

Claims of responsibility were never made for previous attacks on the gas field, which is operated by Dana Gas, based in the United Arab Emirates, and a related company, Crescent Petroleum.

While the drone attack could stem from the regional conflict between Iran and Israel, there are other tensions in the region — between internal Iraqi factions and between Baghdad and Kurdistan. There has been a multiyear effort by the Iraqi federal government in Baghdad and the courts to reduce the Kurdistan region's control over its natural resources.

At the same time, there is tension between Iran and Iraq over any efforts by Iraq to expand domestic gas production. Iran sells about $4 billion of gas to Iraq each year because Iraq does not have enough gas to fuel its electricity plants. Kurdistan and the Iraqi government had been discussing expansion of the Khor Mor field.

Kamil Kakol contributed reporting from Sulaymaniyah Province, Iraq.

— Alissa J. Rubin Reporting from Baghdad

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The entrance hall to the Galilee Medical Center in northern Israel is mostly empty and quiet. Roaring warplanes and the intermittent thunder of artillery have replaced the sounds of doctors, orderlies and patients at this major hospital closest to the border with Lebanon.

Nearly all of the hospital's staff members and patients have gone underground.

Getting to the hospital's nerve center these days involves navigating past 15-foot concrete barricades and multiple blast doors, then descending several floors into a labyrinthine subterranean complex.

That is where thousands of patients and hospital workers have been for the past six months as strikes have intensified between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon, just six miles to the north.

The underground operation at Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya is one of the most striking examples of how life in northern Israel has been upended since Hezbollah began launching near-daily attacks against the Israeli military in October in solidarity with Hamas, the Iranian-backed group that led the attack on southern Israel that month.

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The cross-border fire has prompted tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate towns, villages and schools and forced factories and businesses to close. On the Lebanon side of the border, tens of thousands more have fled their homes.

The hospital had been preparing for such a scenario for years, given its proximity to one of the region's most volatile borders.

"We knew this moment would arrive, we just didn't know when," Dr. Masad Barhoum, the hospital's director general, said in an interview last week.

Hours after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, Galilee Medical Center staff members feared that Hezbollah might mount a similar assault. Even before the government issued evacuation orders, hospital executives decided to relocate most of the vast complex to an underground backup annex. They reduced the 775-bed hospital to 30 percent capacity in case it needed to suddenly accommodate waves of new trauma patients.

"It's our duty to protect the people here," Dr. Barhoum said. "This is what I've been preparing for my whole life."

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The hospital's towering internal medicine ward now stands empty, its wide, neon-lit hallways wrapped in silence. In the ward's current location below ground, the whirs of hospital machinery mingle with the beeps of golf carts carrying supplies through narrow tunnels that open into the hospital's parking lot, offering the only hint of sunlight.

Patients lie in beds separated by mobile curtain racks in a maze of halls. Visitors sit on plastic chairs in a makeshift waiting room, since the space is too crowded to allow everyone to pay a bedside visit. Tubes and wires running across the ceiling give the space the feeling of an engine room.

In the neonatal intensive care unit, new parents in protective gowns huddle to bottle-feed their baby in a dimly lit room. Doctors perform a procedure on another tiny patient a few feet away.

The neonatal unit was the first to move below ground on Oct. 7, said Dr. Vered Fleisher Sheffer, the unit's director.

"While everyone feels safer here," she said, "it's challenging because we are humans, and now we must stay underground."

Her unit also went underground in 2006, during Israel's last all-out war with Hezbollah: Dr. Fleisher Sheffer recalls commuting to the hospital along barren roads as air-raid sirens blared. A rocket hit the ophthalmology ward one day, but the patients had already been moved, hospital officials said.

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That war lasted just over a month, and the threat from Hezbollah was felt less in the years that followed. Oct. 7 changed that.

The day before New York Times journalists visited the hospital, a Hezbollah strike hit a nearby Bedouin village, injuring 17 soldiers and two civilians. The injured were brought to the hospital's I.C.U., where one of the soldiers died on Sunday.

"These are our neighbors," Dr. Fleisher Sheffer said, referring to the Hezbollah militants. "It's not like they are going anywhere, and neither are we."

— Johnatan Reiss Reporting from Nahariya, Israel