Israel says next release of captives will take place on Thursday, followed by another on Saturday.
Israel says a Hamas list shows that eight of the 33 captives to be released in the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement are dead.
Government spokesman David Mencer told journalists on Monday that Hamas said the other 25 are alive. Israel overnight said it had received a list of information on the status of the captives from Hamas.
“The families have been informed of the situation of their relatives,” Mencer said, without providing the names of the deceased.
Israel has said the next release of captives will take place on Thursday, followed by another on Saturday.
Approximately 90 captives are still being held. Prior to this announcement, Israel believed at least 35 of them were dead.
The truce deal in the Israel-Hamas conflict, announced earlier in January after months of fruitless negotiations, took effect on January 19, bringing to a halt more than 15 months of devastating war on Gaza sparked by the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks.
Under the first phase of the agreement, 33 captives held in Gaza are to be released in exchange for more than 1,900 Palestinians held by Israel.
Seven Israeli women have been released since the start of the truce, as have 290 Palestinian prisoners.
Two Israeli women, Arbel Yehud and Agam Berger, are to be released on Thursday along with a third unidentified captive, following negotiations between Hamas and Israel.
Their upcoming release was announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday night as part of the truce agreement with Hamas.
According to Israel, Arbel Yehud, as a woman and a civilian, should have been released last Saturday in the second prisoner exchange of the ceasefire deal.
When she did not appear, the Israeli government accused Hamas of violating the agreement and in retaliation prevented displaced Palestinians from returning to the north of Gaza.
Hamas accused Israel of violating the ceasefire and said it had informed mediators that Yehud was alive and gave guarantees for her release.
On Monday, following Hamas’s pledge to release Yehud and other captives this week, the blockage was lifted.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza began to make the journey back to destroyed homes in the north of the Gaza Strip later on Monday for the first time since the devastating war began.
The United Nations said more than 200,000 people were observed moving north in Gaza on Monday morning alone.
According to UN data, about two-thirds of all buildings in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged during the conflict, and approximately 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents were displaced.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza had reached 47,317, with numbers rising in spite of the ceasefire as new bodies are being found under the rubble.
The ministry said hospitals in the Gaza Strip had received 11 bodies in the past 24 hours – nine bodies recovered after the truce, and two new fatalities. It did not specify how the new deaths occurred.
The ministry said Israeli attacks also wounded at least 111,494 people.
At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023 and more than 200 taken captive.
