Hamas has said it will release Israeli hostages as planned and will implement the Gaza ceasefire deal.

It had previously threatened to delay the next release of hostages after accusing Israel of failing to meet its obligations to allow in tents and shelters, and delaying Palestinians’ return to the north of Gaza.

In response, Israel, with the backing of US President Donald Trump, had threatened to renew its offensive if hostages were not freed.

But Hamas has now indicated three more Israeli hostages would be freed on Saturday.

Egyptian and Qatari mediators have affirmed they will work to “remove all hurdles” to ensure the ceasefire holds, the group added in a statement.

Israel is yet to comment on the Hamas announcement.

The ceasefire began on 19 January, bringing a pause to 16 months of war in Gaza.

In its first stage, which will last 42 days, Hamas is meant to free 33 Israeli hostages taken during its attack on 7 October 2023, which sparked the war.

So far it has released 21 hostages – 16 Israelis and five Thai – in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli custody.

Last week, the release of three Israeli men gave rise to concerns about their gaunt appearance, and what that said about the conditions they had been kept in during 16 months in captivity.

Five Thai citizens were also reunited with their families at the weekend following their release last month.

Read more:
What you need to know about Trump’s Gaza plan
The Israel-Hamas war in numbers

Israel and Hamas are expected to begin negotiations on a second phase of the deal, which would extend the truce and see all Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza in exchange for the freedom of the remaining hostages – though little progress appears to have been made so far.

Negotiations have been further complicated in recent weeks by Mr Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians so the US can take over Gaza.

When Mr Trump hosted Jordan’s king on Tuesday, he reiterated his controversial idea, saying the enclave’s population of over two million would not be able to return but would have a better, safer future elsewhere.

Mr Trump said: “It’s a war-torn area, we’re going to hold it, we’re going to take it… Gaza the way it is, civilisation has been wiped out in Gaza. It’s going to be a great economic development.”

Much of Gaza lies in ruins after Israel’s war to destroy Hamas.

More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.

At least 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage when Hamas launched its massacre in Israel on 7 October 2023.

By the standards of other cities I have been in or visited shortly after a revolution, Damascus seems on the face of it relatively calm.

More often than not, I’d expect masked gunmen to be deployed on every corner, patrolling the streets in groups, or whizzing around on battered trucks, with heavy machine guns at the ready and rocket-propelled grenades strapped to roofs or on the backs of fighters.

But that isn’t the case in Damascus.

There are checkpoints in and out of the city but generally speaking, the militia groups that supported Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), which led the takeover of Syria, are keeping a low profile.

Indeed, many have now become part of the newly formed General Security force, and they’re all dressed in matching black uniforms and fatigues.

I’m often asked what Damascus is like now that Bashar al Assad’s regime is gone.

First, I have to admit that apart from a couple of brief visits to Damascus before 2011, once the uprising began, I was either in the west or north of the country with the demonstrators and later the rebel forces – far from the capital.

I was also among a small group of journalists on a wanted list by the regime, so travel to government-controlled areas was a non-starter.

So for me, my visits to Damascus are part discovery, and part depressing confirmation of what I had expected to see, especially the vast suburban areas reduced to rubble by Assad’s security forces with the aid of the Russian military.

My impression is of a city looking to the future but still suffering from its recent bloody history.

Its people are trying to move on, but many remain in the midst of the ruins, and rebuilding remains a distant hope.

Listen: Inside the fall of Assad

‘Syrians have every right to see justice served’

From the Umayyad Square in Damascus, we jumped onto the back of a pick-up truck full of General Security soldiers and sped away through busy traffic and towards a road leading to a hilltop that overlooks the city.

We passed the sprawling presidential palace, built by the Assads, but now under the management of the self-proclaimed “Salvation Government”.

We were meeting the man in charge of security here in the capital, Abdulrahman Dabbagh, a youthful cousin of the country’s new president Ahmed al Sharaa.

He told me that to move forward, Syria must also hunt down the senior leaders of the Syrian regime who terrorised the entire population.

“Syrians have every right to see justice served for those who caused them harm during the reign of this now-defunct regime,” Mr Dabbagh said.

“By nature, every human finds comfort in witnessing accountability, justice, and the rightful reclaiming of what was taken.”

I asked him if it is difficult tracking down those responsible.

“There are assessments, research, and round-the-clock work being done to locate these criminals,” he explained.

“It’s not always about taking direct action against every person we identify, though, we wait for official orders to arrest certain figures.”

‘The torture was endless’

Barely a family in this country was untouched by the regime and its relentless programme of detentions and torture in jails.

Bariya, 63, was detained for 100 days. Her crime? She was accused of cooking food for demonstrators and spying on regime checkpoints in the city of Homs.

Inside her prison, she says torture was the norm, and the memories of the cries of the men still haunt her.

“It would begin as soon as the sun went down. The torture was endless. My husband was not spared – I recognised his cries. They tormented him,” she told me.

“One of the inmates called out to him, shouting that his family was here, the warders heard her, came straight for him, they dragged him away and beat him in the corridor.”

“They tortured him relentlessly, with no regard for his age – he was born in 1955,” she sobbed.

A legacy of pain and death

Bariya is still so afraid of the Assad regime, she won’t show her face or allow us to use her last name.

She was arrested at the height of the anti-Assad protests, along with multiple members of her family. Seven of them died in detention: her husband, one of her sons, two of her brothers, her nephew, a cousin, and the son of her brother-in-law.

To this day she has no idea what happened.

The legacy of the Assad tyranny is pain and death, and this ancient country’s recent history is still raw for so many.

Consigning it to the history books is going to take some time.

Ukraine must be put in a “position of strength”, European countries including Britain, France and Germany have said as Donald Trump prepares to open peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin.

The US president said an agreement had been reached about starting talks after he made phone calls to the Russian leader and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

European countries also including Poland, Italy, and Spain issued a joint statement saying they would work with the United States on Ukraine’s future.

“We are looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies,” they said.

“Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength.

“A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security.”

It is the US president’s first big step towards diplomacy over a conflict which he promised to end within 24 hours of being inaugurated.

“We both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Mr Trump posted on Truth Social following discussions with Russia’s president.

He said the pair would “work together, very closely” towards winding down the conflict and “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

A Kremlin spokesperson said Mr Putin and Mr Trump had agreed to meet, with the Russian president inviting the US leader to visit Moscow.

Ukraine latest: Trump’s plan to end war

“President Putin, for his part, mentioned the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict and agreed with Trump that a long-term settlement can be achieved through peaceful negotiations,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president wrote on X that he had a “meaningful conversation” by phone with Mr Trump to discuss “opportunities to achieve peace” and the preparation of a document governing security and economic cooperation.

“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace,” he said.

Mr Trump added that his phone conversation with Mr Zelenskyy “went very well”, suggesting that “he [Mr Zelenskyy], like President Putin, wants to make PEACE”.

On social media, the US president said: “It is time to stop this ridiculous war, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!”

Trump’s bombshell phone call

Dominic Waghorn

International affairs editor

@DominicWaghorn

Some of the fundamental principles underlying Western security and prosperity were today abandoned or weakened by the Trump administration.

After 80 years of underwriting security in Europe, America told Europeans they can’t take that for granted anymore.

The principle that aggression cannot be rewarded has been central to the post-war world order.

Today the US told Ukrainians, that Russians will be able to keep some of the land they have taken by force.

A principle of US policy for the last three years has been the West would not negotiate unless Ukraine was involved.

Trump seemed to undermine that commitment today. Read more from Dominic here.

On Wednesday, the US defence secretary delivered a blunt statement on the new US administration’s approach to the nearly three-year-old war.

Read more from Sky News:
Europe must get serious about defence
Hegseth: Big shift in American military policy
Trump welcomes home teacher jailed in Russia

Speaking at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Pete Hegseth said a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and the US did not see NATO membership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the war.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he said.

Separately, the US and Russia agreed to a prisoner swap. America freed a Russian cybercrime boss in return for Moscow’s release of schoolteacher Marc Fogel, a US official said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile at a White House news conference on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she was “not aware of” Mr Trump putting any preconditions on his meeting with Mr Putin.

Mr Trump said the peace negotiations will be led by secretary of state Marco Rubio, director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, national security advisor Michael Waltz, and ambassador Steve Witkoff.