November 29, 2023 Israel-Hamas war

The United States' envoy for hostage affairs is in Israel, a State Department official told CNN Wednesday.

Roger Carstens' visit comes as US efforts to extend the truce and get more hostages freed continue.

Carstens will support US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip this week and will meet with families of American hostages and Israeli government counterparts, the official said.

US Deputy Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Steve Gillen is still in Israel, where he has been for more than a month.

The discussion over the hostages has been led in recent weeks by CIA Director Bill Burns, who was in Qatar for talks on Tuesday.

Red Cross officials have not yet been allowed to visit hostages that Hamas is holding in Gaza, multiple sources have told CNN – a violation of an agreement struck between Israel and Hamas, which stipulated that the Red Cross would be able to visit the hostages by the end of the fourth day of the truce. 

US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said over the weekend that as a part of the Israel-Hamas truce agreement, Red Cross officials would be able to visit hostages still held captive in Gaza “by the end of the fourth day.” Another source familiar with the terms of the agreement echoed that this was an aspect of the deal. 

The US has been asking Qatari mediators to press Hamas on Red Cross access to the remaining hostages as well as providing proof of life as part of the US effort to extend the pause and hostage releases as long as possible, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

But the delay in Red Cross officials visiting hostages in Gaza did not appear likely to derail the truce agreement for now, one of the sources told CNN, as Hamas continues to release hostages each day of the pause in fighting.

In a statement to CNN, International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson Jason Straziuso stressed that the group was not involved in the Israel-Hamas negotiations and that it can “only implement measures that both sides tell us they have agreed to.”

“We've been insisting since day one in direct conversations with Hamas that they release the hostages, barring that, that we be allowed to visit the hostages, and that the hostages be allowed to communicate with their families,” Straziuso said.

Qatar is "very optimistic" an extension to the truce between Israel and Hamas will be announced in the coming hours, following the expected release of the sixth set of hostages, a foreign ministry spokesman told CNN.

International mediators have been pushing for an extension of the agreement as the truce between the warring sides entered its final day on Wednesday.

Speaking to CNN's Kaitlan Collins, spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said: "We are hopeful that within in a couple of hours we will have the release of the final batch [of hostages] but also we will be able to announce an extension."

“We are very optimistic that we will have good news to share today," he added.

Saying that negotiations are ongoing, Al-Ansari added that any new extension would be under the same parameters of the previous agreements.

When pressed for details on the conditions and safety of the remaining hostages, Al-Ansari said negotiations were happening in a "positive environment" while pointing out "we are talking about a war zone with a lot of complications on the ground."

He also said that the release of adult males and Israel Defence Forces soldiers have been topics for discussion and they could be released in the near future.

“We have prioritized those who are most at risk within the hostages regarding women and children who taken paramount. We are moving towards civilian men being released and then having the longer discussions regarding [IDF] soldiers.”

Discussions are underway as negotiators are working toward another potential extension of the truce between Israel and Hamas. 

The current agreement has entered its sixth and potentially final day. Israel has also been given the names of another group of hostages due to be released Wednesday. This will be the second release in the extension of the truce.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on his way to the Middle East with a goal: to extend the pause in Israel's offensive in Gaza.

He said at a news conference Wednesday that the US wanted the pause "so that we continue to get more hostages out and more humanitarian assistance in."

Blinken will attend meetings in Israel, the West Bank, and the United Arab Emirates. He will arrive in Israel as the truce brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt is on the verge of expiring. Officials representing those countries are in consensus about working toward extending the pause, a source familiar with the matter said.

If you're just joining our coverage, here's the latest:

As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads back to the Middle East, he will be focused on extending the pause in Israel’s offensive in Gaza, "so that we continue to get more hostages out and more humanitarian assistance in," he said at a news conference in Brussels Wednesday.

Blinken will make his third trip to the region, with meetings in Israel, the West Bank and the United Arab Emirates in the coming days. He will arrive in Israel as the truce brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt is on the verge of expiring.

“We'd like to see the pause extended because what it has enabled, first and foremost, is hostages being released and being united with their families,” Blinken said. “It's also enabled us to surge humanitarian assistance into the people of Gaza who so desperately need it. So, its continuation, by definition, means that more hostages would be coming home, more assistance would be getting in.”

He said he would be focused, as in trips past, on ensuring the conflict does not spread, and on the “day after” for Gaza.

He described the “day after the day after” as “how do we get on a clear path to meeting the legitimate political aspirations of the Palestinian people, which, really, in our judgment, is the only way to durable peace and durable security for everyone, starting for Israel and Israelis."

“These are conversations that we'll pursue in the days ahead in the weeks ahead, in the months ahead,” he said.

For nearly seven weeks, most people in the Gaza Strip have been just trying to survive, focusing on the basics: finding shelter, fleeing the fighting, getting access to food and water.

The pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas has given many families in Gaza the chance to go outside, buy supplies and return home to retrieve belongings or even bury the bodies of their loved ones.

For many Gazans like Khaled Nabhan, the truce has also deepened the heartache as they take stock of their new, devastated surroundings. The weeks of airstrikes and fighting have left entire neighborhoods leveled to the ground and many are now able to see the full scale of the devastation for the first time.

Toys and memories are all he has left of his beloved grandchildren, 3-year-old Reem and 5-year-old Tarek, who were killed last week while they were sleeping in their bed.

Their home was brought down by what Nabhan said was a nearby Israeli airstrike in the Al Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza. Nabhan has only just managed to return, following the pause in fighting.

In the battered bedroom of their house in Gaza, Nabhan showed CNN where his daughter Maysa — Reem and Tarek’s mother — was sleeping when the house collapsed. Maysa and her sister survived but were seriously injured.

Maysa woke up in the hospital to the news her young children were gone. Their lifeless bodies were found together under the rubble.

“At the hospital I was just numb. I hugged them, I wanted to get as many hugs as I could. No matter how much I hugged them I didn’t get enough,” Maysa said.

More than 14,800 Palestinians, including 6,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive in response to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the West Bank, which draws its data from Hamas-run health authorities in the Gaza Strip.

Read more about Nabhan's story here.

Israel now believes there are 161 hostages taken captive on October 7 who are still in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told CNN Wednesday.

Out of the 161 abductees, 146 are Israelis (some of whom are dual nationals) and 15 are foreigners. Additionally, 126 are male and 35 are female, according to Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office.

Of those who remain kidnapped:

A total of 86 hostages have been released so far (66 of them Israeli): 

One soldier was rescued by IDF troops, and one Russian-Israeli citizen was released due to Russian intervention.

The remains of two abductees who were killed were located by IDF soldiers.

Relatives of the Bibas family have been informed that no one from the family, including 10-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel, are on the list of hostages expected to be released Wednesday, a family member tells CNN.

Ten-month-old Kfir, his brother Ariel, their mother, Shiri, and presumably their father Yarden were kidnapped from kibbutz Nir Oz that was devastated when it came under attack by Hamas militants on October 7. 

A cousin of the family, Eylon Keshet, told CNN they were "really, really worried" about their 10-month-old cousin.

Keshet and his family Wednesday issued a statement warning that the Bibas family held in Gaza is in “dire conditions” and asked US President Joe Biden to speak to the family members directly. 

Overcrowding and lack of food, water, sanitation and basic hygiene are hastening spread of disease in Gaza, according to the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).

In a post on X, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the lack of functioning infrastructure or access to medicine had resulted in a growing number of infections among the approximately 1.3 million people displaced in Gaza.

According to Ghebreyesus, more 110,000 people have acute respiratory infections, more than 70,000 have some level of diarrhea and thousands are plagued by other diseases including scabies, lice, skin rashes, impetigo, chickenpox and jaundice.

Tedros called for a continued ceasefire and warned that the current conditions in the strip heightened the risk of disease outbreaks. He also reiterated earlier comments from WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris that more people could potentially die from disease than bombardment if the health system isn't improved.