After the release of the last living hostages and Palestinian prisoners and detainees, the tenuous ceasefire in Gaza was holding Tuesday while questions remain over other key parts of a U.S. plan for the region.
The long list of uncertainties includes when Hamas will return to Israel the rest of the bodies of the hostages believed to be dead in Gaza, and Israel’s insistence that a weakened Hamas disarm. The future governance of Gaza is also unclear.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants back dead hostages held in Gaza.
The Israeli military said the Red Cross is transferring to its custody four coffins with the remains of deceased hostages.
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The Israeli military said the Red Cross is transferring to its custody four coffins with the remains of deceased hostages. Israeli authorities said earlier Tuesday that the Red Cross was on its way to a meeting point in southern Gaza to pick up “several coffins” of deceased hostages.
The transfer of more deceased hostages comes after an Israeli military agency said it would halve the number of trucks allowed to bring humanitarian aid into devastated Gaza, over concerns that the militant group was returning the remains of dead hostages more slowly than agreed.
Families of hostages and their supporters expressed dismay that only four of the 28 bodies were returned on Monday.
U.S. President Donald Trump also expressed concern in a social media post that too few of the dead hostages have been returned. He made no mention of Israel halving the flow of aid into the territory.
Rebecca Bohbot, wife of freed hostage Elkana Bohbot, said in a press conference that her husband underwent “abuse and suffering” in Hamas captivity and that he “didn’t receive food” in the last several months.
She further said that closer to his release date, her husband received food “in big quantity” to look better upon his release, and that he therefor suffered stomach aches. Bohbot then said with a smile that coming back home from captivity, her husband was “born anew.”
Trump says he wants dead hostages held in Gaza back and warns Hamas if “they don’t disarm, we will disarm them.”
The U.S. president made the comment while speaking at the White House during Argentinian President Javier Milei’s visit.
It comes after an Israeli military agency declared a “violation” of the truce agreement that it would respond to by halving the number of trucks allowed to bring humanitarian aid into the devastated territory.
Eli Sharabi, who was freed from Hamas captivity earlier this year, told Israel’s Channel 12 about his reunion with fellow former hostage and friend Alon Ohel and spoke about the return of his brother’s body.
Sharabi described meeting Ohel as “very emotional,” calling him “an amazing boy, strong, a survivor.” He said the two discussed carrying out plans they made while in captivity together and expressed joy that Ohel had returned to his family in a strong and optimistic state. Prior to Ohel’s return, Sharabi spoke extensively and publicly about the special, father-son like, bond the two developed while held in Hamas’ tunnels.
Sharabi also reflected on the return of the body of his brother, Yossi Sharabi, who died in captivity. “Now his daughters and his wife and all of us will have a grave to cry over,” he said.
Israel plans to halve the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza and limit distribution of assistance into the war-torn territory as it accuses Hamas of violating a days-old ceasefire agreement with the slow release of the remains of dead hostages the militant group seized on Oct. 7, 2023.
Word of the cut was transmitted to U.S. officials and international aid groups, according to three AP sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.
The Israeli government and the Israeli military agency in charge of transferring aid to Gaza didn’t comment.
-By Sam Mednick and Giovanna Dell'Orto
Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the U.N. humanitarian office in Gaza, said Tuesday that 817 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the ceasefire took effect last week but warned that while there is relief for the first time in months, their work is still cut out for them.
“The ceasefire has ended the fighting, but it hasn’t ended the crisis,” she told reporters at a virtual briefing.
Cherevko confirmed to reporters Tuesday that their office had received the notice from COGAT earlier in the day that aid deliveries would be limited and crossings would be closed.
“We have received this communication from the Israeli authorities and, of course, we continue to encourage the parties to adhere to the agreements that have been set out in the ceasefire parameters,” she said at a virtual briefing. “We certainly very much hope that the bodies, of the hostages are handed over and that the ceasefire continues to be implemented.”
She added that despite the border crossings being closed to aid, humanitarian workers will continue to pick up what they can and move things through the pipeline in case the decision by Israeli authorities are reversed.
U.N. World Food Program director for Gaza said that opening all crossings for food aid to flood the Gaza Strip is a top priority, and he hopes world leaders who attended Monday's summit in Egypt will push this forward.
“We believe that the ceasefire opens the way for a scale-up but it’s just the beginning related to a proper recovery,” Antoine Renard said. “What is so adamant is that you have all the different capacity to reach population where they are.”
Since Oct. 5, the U.N. has reinstated 10 industrial bakeries into central and southern Gaza, he said. “It’s practically half a million people being covered now with bread. But that is not enough.”
The U.N. hopes to see at least two dozen bakeries as part of its scale-up, Renard said.
Gaza's Nasser Hospital said Tuesday it received the first 45 bodies of Palestinians who had been detained by the Israeli military since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that triggered the war.
The bodies were handed over by the International Committee of the Red Cross as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement. A total of 450 bodies were to be returned to Gaza from Israel, the hospital said.
The hospital said some of the bodies showed signs of torture and having their hands bound. It was not immediately clear when or how they died.
On Monday, the last 20 living hostages were released to Israel in exchange for 1,808 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Hamas is yet to return the remains of 24 hostages under the ceasefire deal.
Palestinians who were freed in past exchanges have reported frequent beatings, insufficient food and deprivation of medical care in Israeli prisons. A 2024 U.N. report said that since Oct. 7, 2023, thousands of Palestinians have been held arbitrarily and incommunicado by Israel, often shackled, blindfolded, deprived of food, water, sleep and medical care and subjected to torture or degrading treatment.
Israel maintains that it follows international and domestic legal standards for the treatment of prisoners and that any violations by prison personnel are investigated. Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is in charge of prisons, has repeatedly boasted of making prison conditions for Palestinians as harsh as possible while meeting the letter of the law.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz, one of the leaders who attended Monday’s summit in Egypt, said Tuesday that “the really hard work on what can and must come of this starts now.” He added that he sees greater opportunities than risks but “there are of course risks; we have to see these risks. We have to remain very realistic.”
Merz said he had told colleagues in Egypt: “I don’t want to be sitting with the same group in half a year and having to ask: What went wrong?”
The Israeli military identified two of the dead hostages returned from Gaza on Monday — Guy Illouz from Israel and Bipin Joshi, a student from Nepal.
Both were in their 20s when Hamas-led militants took them during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war. Illouz was abducted from a music festival and Joshi from a bomb shelter.
Israel said Illouz died of his wounds while being held captive without proper medical treatment, while Joshi was killed in captivity in the first months of the war.
The ceasefire plan introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump called for “all hostages, alive and deceased” to be returned within 72 hours of the agreement’s acceptance. But it also provided a mechanism if that didn’t happen, saying Hamas should share information about any remaining deceased hostages and “exert maximum effort to ensure the fulfillment of these commitments as soon as possible.” The agreement signed last week also said Israel would provide information on the remains of Palestinians who died in Israeli custody.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s summit that 15 Palestinian technocrats have been selected to administer postwar Gaza. He said their names were already vetted by Israel, without disclosing them.
“We need to deploy them to take care of the daily life of the people in Gaza, and the Board of Peace should support and supervise the flow of finance and money, which will come for the reconstruction of Gaza,” he said, referring to a board that would govern Gaza and be chaired by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Abdelatty said the 15-member committee had already been approved by all Palestinian factions, including Hamas.
He said Hamas members welcomed Trump’s plan. They “have no role in the transitional period. They are committed to that. That is why they are working on an administrative Palestinian committee to be deployed in order to take care of the daily life of the people of Gaza,” Abdelatty said.
For its part, Israel has to comply with a withdrawal from Gaza, allowing a flow of aid the deployment of the administrative committee on the ground to ensure security for civilians, Abdelatty said. Hamas also must honor its commitments, he said.
Egypt announced that it would host a reconstruction and recovery conference for Gaza with the help of the U.S. and Germany.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Tuesday those responsible for the destruction in Gaza should he held accountable in spite of the fragile ceasefire reached between Hamas and Israel.
Sánchez said there should be no impunity for “the main actors in the genocide that has been perpetrated in Gaza,” without naming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or others in his government.
“Peace cannot mean forgetting, there can be no impunity. There are cases open now in the International Criminal Court,” Sánchez told Spanish radio station Cadena SER, in an apparent reference to the arrest warrants issued by the world’s top war-crimes court against Netanyahu and his former defense minister over Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
Spain was one of Europe’s sharpest critics of Israel’s two-year war in Gaza with Sánchez last month calling Israel’s actions there a genocide.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is cautioning that finding and returning the remains of former hostages in Gaza is “an even bigger challenge” than freeing those who were still alive.
Christian Cardon, an ICRC official, detailed how the remains of four deceased hostages were returned to Israel on Monday, the same day the last remaining 20 living hostages were released and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees handed over to the humanitarian agency.
“The search for human remains, it’s obviously (an) even bigger challenge than having — I would say — the people alive being released,” he said at a U.N. news briefing in Geneva.
“There will be human remains handed over from both sides” in the future, and ICRC will again have a role in the “very sensitive operation,” Cardon said, adding that he wasn’t able to say how soon that might happen. He said the search for remains would be a “massive challenge,” citing unexploded ordnance and the difficulty of identifying bodies.
The release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees offers a rare glimpse into the immediate health impacts of incarceration in Israel.
Some of the those released on Monday are suffering from a range of health problems they developed during years in Israeli detention, doctors and freed prisoners in the occupied West Bank told The Associated Press.
“I was beaten on the shoulder, causing it to tear. For eight months, I wasn’t given even a pill for the pain,” said Kamal Abu Shanab, 51, who was released after more than 18 years behind bars. A military court in 2007 convicted him of “military training, voluntary manslaughter and membership in an unrecognized organization,” according to Israel’s list of exchanged prisoners.
The Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah received 14 men released on Monday as part of the exchange and discharged all but two. Doctors examining the men said their conditions suggested they had been beaten.
“It indicates that these patients were subjected to severe beatings, reflecting the extent of the violence they endured,” said Imed al-Shami, a resident doctor at the hospital’s emergency room.
The AP could not independently verify the claims. The Israel Prison Service said it was unaware of such claims. “All inmates are held according to legal procedures, and their rights including access to medical care and adequate living conditions are upheld,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
Israel says it adheres to its prison standards under law and investigates any reports of violations. But such allegations are consistent with findings previously documented by media organizations and human rights groups.
The U.N. development agency says the amount of rubble in Gaza would stack 12 meters (about 40 feet) high in all of New York’s Central Park or be enough to build 13 giant pyramids in Giza in Egypt.
Jaco Cillers, special representative of UNDP administrator for a program to help Palestinians, says the latest joint estimate from the U.N., the European Union and the World Bank is that $70 billion will be required to rebuild Gaza. That figure was tallied in September, and up from $53 billion estimated in February.
“The estimated damage and rubble, throughout the whole of Gaza is in the region of 55 million tons,” he said. “Another way to put it, apart from the example from Central Park that I mentioned, is (that it’s) also equal to 13 pyramids in Giza.”
“That is the amount and size of the challenge,” Cillers told a U.N. press briefing in Geneva by video from Jerusalem.
He said $20 billion would be needed in the next three years, and the rest would be needed over a longer period – possibly decades.
Cillers pointed to “good indications” from potential donors such as those in the Arab world, Europe and the United States, without specifying.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed that an agreement signed in Egypt is not a peace deal but rather a framework for a ceasefire and said the United States and other nations must exert pressure on Israel to ensure its compliance.
Speaking to journalists on his return from the ceremony in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh late on Monday, the Turkish leader insisted that the only viable solution is a two-state solution recognizing Palestinian statehood.
“Turkey is determined to continue working toward this goal,” he said, according to a transcript of his comments were made available on Tuesday.
Erdogan said United States and others should ensure that Israel complies with agreement, citing what he said was the country’s alleged poor track record on honoring ceasefires.
Erdogan would not say whether Turkish troops would be deployed to Gaza, saying discussions about the structure and role of a task force for the region were still continuing. He said, however, that his government was focused on reconstruction and providing humanitarian support, including the possibility of sending container homes to Gaza.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds a signed document during a summit to support ending the more than two-year Israel-Hamas war in Gaza after a breakthrough ceasefire deal, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. (Suzanne Plunkett/Pool via AP)
From left, Paraguay's President Santiago Pena, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, U.S. President Donald Trump, Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban attend the Gaza International Peace Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (Suzanne Plunkett/Pool Photo via AP)
A worker cleans the ground at the plaza known as hostages square, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
