Live: Israel dropped 153 tonnes of bombs on Gaza on Sunday

Israeli authorities have begun transferring Palestinian prisoners slated for release to Ofer and Ketziot prisons, Haaretz is reporting.

Prisoners set to be released in the occupied West bank were transferred to Ofer Prison, while those expected to be released in Gaza or Egypt were sent to Ketziot.

The head of the US Central Command (Centcom) said on Saturday that he visited Gaza to discuss post-conflict stabilisation and insisted no US troops will be deployed to the Palestinian territory.

Admiral Brad Cooper wrote on X that he just returned from a trip to Gaza to discuss the creation of a Centcom-led "civil-military coordination centre" which will "support conflict stabilisation".

Reporting by AFP

The remains of at least 151 Palestinians, as well as 72 wounded people, have been transferred to hospitals in Gaza over the last 24 hours, the enclave's health ministry has reported.

It added that 116 of the bodies were recovered from the rubble, belonging to people who were killed in the earlier stages of Israel's genocide in Gaza.

At least 67,682 people have been killed, and another 170,033 wounded in Israel's two-year genocide in Gaza. The enclave's civil defence reported earlier that an estimated 9,600 people remain missing.

Residents of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank have appealed for help after an Israeli court ruled for the demolition of a vital community centre.

The Youth of Sumud (YOS) Centre in At-Tuwani, one of Masafer Yatta's composite villages, has been a hub for pro-Palestine campaigning and community organising for four years, and served as a guest house for foreign activists.

YOS campaigners were featured in the documentary No Other Land, with At-Tuwani being the home village of the documentary's co-director Basel Adra.

On 29 September, the Jerusalem District Court rejected an appeal against a demolition order issued in 2022. The destruction of the site could occur within the next week.

YOS coordinator Sami Huraini, whose family has owned the land the centre is located on for generations, said they had been in a legal battle for years over the building.

Read more: Appeals for support after Jerusalem court threatens Masafer Yatta community centre

US troops have started arriving in Israel to set up a coordination centre that will oversee the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire deal, ABC news is reporting, citing two officials.

The officials emphasised that no US troops would enter Gaza.

One of the officials reported that the 200 troops being sent to Israel specialise in transportation, planning, logisitics, security and engineering, adding that they will be working together with representatives from other nations, the private sector and NGOs.

Gaza's civil defence has reported that 9,500 people are still missing under the rubble across Gaza.

Its teams have already begun rescue operations, recovering the bodies of some 155 people so far.

It added that it has received 75 distress calls since dawn today, and called on the Red Cross to coordinate with Israel to locate missing people as it lacks the resources and equipment to retrieve all the bodies from the rubble.

According to the agency, 300,000 displaced Palestinians have arrived in Gaza City since the ceasefire took hold on Friday. People have erected makeshift tents on the rubble, but lack adequate shelter as aid is not due to enter the Strip until tomorrow.

Some 700,000 people were displaced from Gaza City and the north by intense Israeli bombardment and raids on the area in the weeks before the ceasefire came into force.

Hamas has warned that Tony Blair would not be welcome in any role in governing Gaza following the commencement of a ceasefire in the enclave.

Speaking to Sky News, senior Hamas official Basem Naim said he welcomed US President Donald Trump's involvement in bringing about an end to the two-year war.

However, he said that there could be no role for the former British prime minister in the governance of Gaza, despite Trump's previously announced support for Blair's involvement.

"When it comes to Tony Blair, unfortunately, we Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, and maybe others around the world have bad memories of him," Naim said.

"We can still remember his role in killing, causing thousands or millions of deaths to innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Read more: Hamas says Tony Blair not welcome in Gaza following ceasefire

Israel will not release two detained Palestinian doctors, including paediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya and Dr Marwan Al-Hams, as part of the ceasefire deal, a Hamas official told CNN.

Safiya was beaten and kidnapped by Israeli forces during a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in December last year after he refused to abandon patients under siege.

Footage in the aftermath of the attack showed Safiya wearing a white medical overcoat crossing a street strewn with rubble. The Israeli military said Safiya was being held as a "suspect" and being questioned over "potential involvement in terrorist activity". Safiya has been held since then without charge.

In July, lawyer Ghaid Ghanem Qassem revealed that Safiya had lost over a third of his body weight in detention in Israel's notorious Ofer prison, was being brutally beaten and that his repeated requests for medical attention had been refused.

“Dr Hossam Abu Safieh is not okay. My most recent visit to him was just a few days ago, on 9 July 2025. He has lost more than 40 kg - over a third of his weight," Qassem said in a post on Facebook.

“At the time of his arrest, he weighed 100 kilograms. Today, his weight does not exceed 60,” she said, adding that he was “severely beaten on 24 June 2025”.

“His cell in Ofer Prison - Cell 1, Section 24 - was specifically targeted. He was brutally beaten in the chest area.”

Furthermore, she reported that Safiya suffers from "irregular heartbeat, and his eyeglasses, which were recently brought in through his lawyer, were broken".

According to the Hamas official, Dr Marwan Al-Hams, the director Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah and an official overseeing field hospitals in Gaza, will also not be released. Hams was abducted by an undercover Israeli force disguised in civilian clothing in July this year. 

According to eyewitness accounts collected by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), on 21 July, four armed individuals wearing civilian clothing raided Sea Castle Cafeteria, near the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) field hospital on al-Rasheed Coastal Street in al-Mawasi, western Rafah.  

They opened fire, wounding Hams and killing freelance photojournalists Tamer Rebhi Rafiq al-Zaanin and Ibrahim Atef Atiyah Abu Asheibah.

PCHR said that the raid was timed with the filming of a documentary produced by Zaanin in collaboration with Hams.

Hams was then thrown in the back of a white vehicle and driven away. His whereabouts are currently unknown, as the Israeli authorities have failed to issue a statement confirming his detention.

According to data from the Palestinian Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW), some 28 doctors from Gaza are being held in Israeli custody - eight of them are senior consultants in surgery, orthopaedics, intensive care, cardiology and paediatrics.

Gaza's government media office has reported in a statement that thousands of missions have already been conducted in the last 24 hours, including recoveries of bodies, logistical operations related to aid delivery and the treatment of the wounded.

It said that around 1,200 medical and health missions had been conducted, involving the treatment of the wounded and sick.

Meanwhile the Gaza Civil Defence, police and municipal teams were able to safely conduct 850 rescue and relief missions, including the recovery of bodies, removal of rubble and the securing of destroyed areas.

Over 900 service missions were also rolled out to restore water and sewage lines, remove rubble and waste and open residential neighbourhoods.

Over 700 humanitarian missions for food distribution have also been conducted, and over 650 community missions in shelters and field schools to provide psychosocial support for children and vulnerable groups.

Additionally, it said that 7,000 logistical, organisational and media missions related to the delivery of aid, documentation of field activities, and the provision of data to local and international bodies were conducted.

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has instructed his fighters to halt attacks on Israel and on Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in light of the signing of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, Saudi Arabian news channel is reporting citing an unnamed source.

According to the source, the cessation of hostilities will hold as long as Israel continues to observe the ceasefire, adding that the group's future activities will aim to support the Palestinians.

Since the launch of Israel's genocide in Gaza, the Houthi group has repeatedly targeted Israeli-linked commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in solidarity with Palestinians.

A UN official told the New York Times that Israel has green lit the scaling up of aid deliveries to Gaza starting on Sunday.

The ceasefire agreement struck by Hamas and Israel stipulates an increase in aid deliveries into the Strip, as well as the opening of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, although questions remain around how the aid will be distributed and which agencies will be permitted to do it.

The UN said that some 170,000 metric tonnes of food, shelter and medicine is being held in warehouses outside Gaza and that aid workers are "ready and eager to act".

As part of the first phase of US President Donald Trump's 20-point plan, Gaza's crossings will fully reopen on Monday, allowing the entry of 400 aid trucks daily, expected to rise to 600 in the following days.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujjaric said negotiations were ongoing with Israel to determine the amount of aid and frequency of deliveries, as well as the opening of more crossings.

"What has changed dramatically yesterday to today is the fact that the guns appear to have been silenced," Dujjaric said. "It's safer for our people to operate."

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said they had enough supplies in its warehouses to fill 6,000 trucks and that their teams stand ready to initiate distribution of lifesaving aid in the Strip.

Sam Rose, Unrwa's director of affairs in Gaza, told Middle East Eye that questions remained around the agency's ability to deliver the aid due to an ongoing Israeli ban on its activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

While the current ban does not apply to Unrwa's activities within Gaza, the "no-contact" policy bars their trucks from entering the enclave.

Rose said the agency is preparing to get other organisations to bring their supplies into the Strip.

"What we're advocating for is that Unrwa be allowed to distribute those supplies once they get to Gaza," he told MEE. "The legislation says nothing about Unrwa's activities inside the territory."

Rose emphasised the centrality of Unrwa's expertise in securing an effective large-scale distribution of aid in Gaza.

"We've got enough food to feed everyone for between two and three months, and the population is starving. We've got shelter items for hundreds of thousands of people, blankets for over a million people."

Unlike other NGOs, Unrwa's long history of working in Gaza means it has secured the networks and community's trust to coordinate fast and effective aid distribution, he added.

"We have an ability. We're making everyone's lives much more difficult inside of Gaza if Unrwa is not permitted to be part of aid distribution," Rose said.

Israeli forces shot an elderly man in the town of Al-Qarara, northeast of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is reporting.

Hamas official Bassem Naim has said in an interview with Sky News that the group will not completely disarm.

He added that the group would hand over its weapons to the military of a Palestinian state that includes its members.

"No one has the right to deny us the right to resist the occupation," Naim said.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, here are the latest updates:

• Tens of thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians are returning to northern Gaza as the ceasefire takes hold. In Gaza City, people are erecting tents on the rubble.
• Despite the ceasefire coming into force, Wafa news agency reported that 19 people were killed in Israeli drone strikes on Friday. It added that the bodies of some 135 people killed in Israeli attacks, many retrieved from the rubble, were transferred to hospitals.
• US President Donald Trump has confirmed that Israeli captives held in Gaza are set to be released on Monday.
• One person has been killed in an Israeli attack on the village of al-Najariyah in southern Lebanon on Friday.
• In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces shot a Palestinian man during a military raid on the city of Dura. The soldiers then barred ambulances attempting to reach the area to treat the victim.

Our live blog is now closed until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

• US President Donald Trump wants Gaza to have a government but not a military force, Haaretz reported, citing senior US officials.

• An Israeli drone strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, killed at least two people around 6 pm local time on Friday, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.

• The US has spent nearly $34bn supporting Israel since 7 October 2023, according to a report published by Brown University on Tuesday, revealing the staggering cost of Israel’s wars in the region to US taxpayers.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israeli forces will remain in Gaza to exert pressure on Hamas until the group disarms, Reuters news agency reported. 

• The US military confirmed on Friday that Israeli forces had completed the first phase of their withdrawal from Gaza, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

• Gaza's Civil Defence Agency said that approximately 200,000 people have returned to the north of the territory since a ceasefire took effect on Friday.

• Israeli forces have killed at least 17 Palestinians and wounded 71 others in Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the Palestinian health ministry.