On the morning of October 7, Hamas fighters streamed into the quiet lanes of kibbutz Alumim, setting off on a rampage of killing and destruction. But most of their victims in the community weren’t Israeli, or even Jewish, they were Thai and Nepali farm workers, sleeping in a dormitory right in the militants’ path.

Some of the men limped, others were pushed. Flanked by gunmen, the men were marched to their deaths.

Security staff watched helplessly on CCTV from just a few hundred meters away as the 23 men were massacred.

Among the more than 1,200 victims of the Hamas attacks, Thais make up the largest group of foreign nationals. Most were workers on agricultural sites close to the perimeter fence that separates Israel from Gaza. Hamas freed a group of 10 Thais taken hostage on Friday but others remain captive.

The violence has set off an exodus of foreign workers from Israel, with some 10,000 farmworkers estimated to have left since October 7, according to the Israeli government.

For Israel’s dairy and agricultural farms, that has posed an almost existential problem. Dairy cows need milking several times a day by specially trained staff, while the past weeks have been the harvest window for many crops.

Without hands to work on the farms, crops and animals would have been left to die. Volunteers from across Israel have stepped in to prop them up, but much-needed foreign workers are still yet to return, and farmers fear that without guarantees of security, the future of Israeli farming near Gaza is impossible.

No return

Wounded by shrapnel, he hid for two days on the farm where he worked along the Gaza border, before being rescued by Israeli security forces. Return is not an option for him, he said.

“Nothing is left there, and I am too afraid to go back.”

Israeli farms largely relied on Palestinian workers up until the 1990s. But following the wave of violence during the First Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, and the ensuing Israeli crackdown on the freedom of Palestinians to work outside the occupied territories, Israel started to look elsewhere for farm labor.

Today, many farm workers come from poorer areas in Thailand’s northeast, providing a cheap labor force for Israel. Strict conditions govern their work in Israel, keeping them on short contracts in manual work, with no right to raise families there. The farms around Gaza employed about 6,000 Thai workers before the war began, according to Israel’s ministry of interior.

With no sign yet of a mass return of Thai workers, the Israeli government is looking to recruit some 5,000 workers from other countries, including Sri Lanka.

After the killing, a deep wound 

And the significance of agriculture in Israel is more than economic.

“Agriculture and farming are an inseparable part of Zionism. Working the land is an important value among the people of Israel,” said Lior Simcha, chief executive of the Milk Producers Association.

However, as Israel’s economy developed, the country’s citizens were able to take higher-paying jobs in different sectors, leaving agricultural jobs unfilled.

Farming in the dusty plains of southern Israel is almost ingrained in the national identity of the country. The frontier spirit of the kibbutz pioneers, who did much to establish large-scale agriculture in Israel’s south, is a source of national pride for many in the country.

But those farmers require watertight guarantees of security for their work to continue and for their families to feel safe.

“We need to open the border to Egypt, (so) that all the (Gazan) people go to Egypt, live there. And we close the border, and we grow potato(es) all the way to the sea,” he said from one of his fields. “This is the safety that we need to come back. And it’s not going to happen, you know, two million people there, you cannot just throw them, shoot them, it’s people.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not outlined a defined, post-fighting strategy for Gaza, where more than two-thirds of the 2 million inhabitants are now internally displaced, and where more than 40% of all housing units have been either destroyed or damaged, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), citing the Ministry of Housing in Gaza.

Any forced displacement of Gaza’s population into Egypt would constitute a war crime and the United States has warned against Israel re-occupying Gaza.

A lifeline in the fields

Inbar’s remaining foreign workers quietly motor up and down the rows of zucchini. Nearby, some of his Israeli volunteers, chatting amongst themselves, stoop to gather up zucchini that lie splayed across the dirt, the result of a clumsily overturned cart. The contrast between the two groups couldn’t be starker.

Inbar said the manpower shortage has already forced him to abandon his tomato crop. Without the volunteers, the zucchini would have met a similar fate, he said. Long-term, he doesn’t know how he can keep his farm running at capacity without the return of foreign laborers.

At the dairy farm at Kibbutz Alumim, where the buildings of Gaza City cluster the horizon less than 3 miles away, the burned-out shells of barns and the skeleton of living quarters where nearly two dozen Thai and Nepali workers were slaughtered are a constant reminder of the violence of October 7.

“The foreign workers run the farm, they do all the milking,” farm manager Stevie Marcus said of the working of the farm before October 7.

Today, four volunteers help him milk his herd twice a day. Requiring special training from a veterinarian to work with the animals, these volunteers are in short supply.

“We’re doing the bare minimum we need to do, making sure they have food and clean water, milking them,” he said.

Before October, the 350 cows were milked three times a day. After going days without food and care after workers fled following the attacks, the cows now only have milk for two sessions.

Standing among Inbar’s zucchini, tech worker Avi Leibovich – volunteering on a day off from his day job – said he came to help Israeli farms survive.

“Without them, probably the markets will be empty,” he said, adding: “I don’t think that this kind of industry can be relying only on imports.” Foreign produce is one of the government’s short-term solutions to the manpower crisis, boosting import quotas on milk and plant products.

He was laid-back about the risk of coming so close to Gaza while rockets do still occasionally streak across the sky. Volunteers have seconds to find shelter if the alarm sounds.

“We live in such an insane environment where this is okay. There’s a war zone,” he said, admitting that he hadn’t told his mother where he was.

After the October 7 attacks, fellow farm volunteer Mei – who didn’t want to give her last name – had ferried soldiers and civilians around Israel’s south in her car, helping however she could.

The ferocity of Hamas’ attacks sparked calls for immediate revenge among many Israelis. And the relentless bombing of Gaza has been welcomed in some quarters. But on Mei’s long car rides, she soon grew uncomfortable with what she called the “celebration” of the destruction in Gaza shared by some of her passengers.

She turned to picking vegetables, more comfortable with the thought that her days weren’t supporting Israel’s bloody campaign in Gaza.

For feeding people, unlike helping them fight, posed no moral qualms for Mei.

“There’s no question about it,” she said of her labor in the fields. “It’s undeniably good.”

The number of people killed by floods from heavy rains in Somalia has risen to 96, state news agency SONNA said on Saturday.

“Somalia’s flood death toll climbs to 96,” SONNA said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, adding the figure had been confirmed by Mahamuud Moallim, the head of the country’s disaster management agency.

Like the rest of east and Horn of Africa, Somalia has been battered by relentless heavy rains that began in October, caused by the El Nino and Indian Ocean Dipole weather phenomena.

Both are climate patterns that impact ocean surface temperatures and cause above-average rainfall.

The flooding has been described as the worst in decades and has displaced about 700,000 people, according to the United Nations.

The intense rains have unleashed widespread flooding across the country, triggering displacement and exacerbating an already existing humanitarian crisis caused by years of insurgency.

In neighboring Kenya the floods have so far killed 76 people, according to the Kenyan Red Cross, and also unleashed widespread displacement, destruction of roads and bridges and left many residents without shelter, drinking and food supplies, according to the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Russia on Saturday launched its largest drone attack against Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv since the start of its invasion, according to local officials.

“A total of nearly 75 Shahed drones were launched from two directions – Primorsko-Akhtarsk and the Kursk region, Russia. The primary target was the city of Kyiv,” said Ukraine’s Air Force in a Telegram post, describing the attack as a “record number” of drones.

It said air defenses intercepted 71 of the Iranian-made drones across six regions of Ukraine – but the vast majority of the drones were intercepted in the Kyiv region.

“Anti-aircraft missile troops, tactical aviation, mobile fire groups, and electronic warfare units were involved in repelling the air attack,” said the air force. It added that a Kh-59 guided missile was also destroyed in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Mykhailo Shamanov, a spokesman for the Kyiv city military administration, described several waves of drones coming from different directions toward the capital.

It was the fourth drone attack on Kyiv this month, according to Shamanov.

At least two people were injured in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko.

Several locations in Solomianskyi district caught fire, including a residential building and other non-residential premises, Klitschko said.

He added that the second floor of a five-story residential building in Solomianskyi district was damaged, and that the wreckage of downed drones fell on two residential buildings – one in the Dniprovskyi district, the other in the Holosiivskyi district.

In a separate statement, Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv city military administration, said a fire had broken out on the premises of a kindergarten after a drone was downed in the Solomianskyi district.

Last winter, Russia carried out a sustained campaign of missile and drone attacks to cripple Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

The country’s energy ministry said this recent attack on Kyiv cut off power to an overhead line, leaving 77 residential buildings and 120 establishments without power in the city center.

Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine, has become a regular target of attacks, with the shockwaves from explosions damaging infrastructure in the region, including its nuclear power plant.

“Powerful explosions” shook the area near the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, with shockwaves shattering windows and temporarily cutting off power to some off-site radiation monitoring stations. IAEA experts at the plant were also told that two drones were shot down in close proximity to the site.

The IAEA said that the incident “once again highlighted the dangers to nuclear safety and security during the ongoing military conflict.”

While concerns remain about the country’s energy this winter, Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK has spent the last seven months restoring infrastructure, trying to boost output and bolster defenses at its facilities.

According to deputy chief of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence, Vadym Skibitsky, attacks to the country’s energy grid will be harder for Russia to pull off this time around.

Citizens have also been preparing for the possibility of a downed power grid. One company that installs energy storage systems nationally, has seen a significant rise in demand as people seek off-the-grid solutions, while businesses and companies buy generators and secondary batteries.

Oscar Pistorius will be released on parole in January, prison authorities announced Friday, drawing criticism from Reeva Steenkamp’s mother, who said she did not believe the South African athlete had been rehabilitated since he murdered her daughter almost 11 years ago.

Pistorius shot Steenkamp four times through the bathroom door of his house in 2013, denying that he killed her in a fit of anger and saying instead he had mistaken her for an intruder. He was originally sentenced to 13 years and five months imprisonment.

June Steenkamp said she was concerned for the safety of other women once he was released on parole.

In a victim impact statement, she said her daughter’s death had left a “massive hole” in her life that cannot be filled.

Her statement was also read outside a South African parole board meeting by a family representative.

In the statement, Steenkamp said while she had forgiven Pistorius, she doesn’t believe his version of events.

“At this time, I am not convinced that Oscar has been rehabilitated,” her statement said.

“Rehabilitation requires someone to engage honestly with the full truth of his crime and the consequences thereof. Nobody can claim to have remorse if they are not able to engage fully with the truth.

“If someone does not show remorse, they cannot be considered to be rehabilitated. If they are not rehabilitated, their risk of recidivism is high.”

June Steenkamp said she did not attend Friday’s parole board hearing because she couldn’t “muster the energy to face him (Pistorius) again.”

She also raised concerns about his pattern of violent and aggressive behaviour.

“I do not know to what extent this behaviour still exists or were evident during his time of incarceration, but I am concerned for the safety of any woman should this not have been addressed in his rehabilitation.”

‘Blade Runner’

The athlete – known as the “Blade Runner” for his carbon-fiber prosthetic legs and once feted as an inspirational figure after competing in the 2012 Olympics – became the center of a trial that was followed around the world.

During the trial, Pistorius pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder and a firearms charge associated with Steenkamp’s killing.

Prosecutors argued her killing was deliberate and that the shooting happened after the couple had an argument.

He frequently broke down in court and his past behavior was closely scrutinized.

Pistorius was convicted of manslaughter in 2014 and sentenced to five years. But a higher court overturned the conviction and changed it to murder a year later, increasing his sentence to six years in prison.

The ruling was appealed by prosecutors who claimed the sentence was too lenient. Pistorius’ sentence was increased to 13 years and five months by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal in 2017.

Nimi Princewill and Niamh Kennedy contributed to this report.

This story was updated.

“I am on my way to see my home… my family that is under the rubble,” Mahmoud Moharram, a displaced Palestinian, said as he walked with a group of residents hoping to return to northern Gaza while the lull in fighting holds.

“We left them. We want to go home,” he added.

The long-awaited Friday truce between Israel and Hamas has provided thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with a moment’s respite from nearly seven weeks of fighting. The sound of overhead military drones on Friday quietened for the first time since October 7 – the day Hamas brutally assaulted Israeli cities, killing more than 1,200 people in the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

The strikes on Gaza may have paused, but residents are still faced with destroyed homes, missing loved ones and aid that is only slowly trickling in.

Many are using the lull in fighting to try to travel back north, despite the Israeli military warning against this.

Shortly before the truce was due to come into effect, Israel was eager to remind Palestinians in Gaza that this was only a temporary lull in fighting and did not signify an end to the war.

“The war is not over yet,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a video posted on X on Friday. “The cessation of hostilities for humanitarian purposes is temporary.”

Adraee also warned Gazans against heading back north, saying that part of the territory “is a dangerous war zone and it is forbidden to move toward it.”

Flyers in Arabic were also dropped across southern Gaza on Friday morning, bearing similar information and instructions.

But many Gazans say they need to use this pause in fighting to return home, where memories, belongings, money, clothes and even some of their loved ones remain – dead or alive.

‘We want to bury them’

“These are our homes, (where we left) our money, our things, our belongings,” said Asa’ad Agha, a displaced Palestinian from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.

“What truce are they talking about when tanks are firing at us all morning?” said Abo Mohamed al-Fayoumi, sitting next to some blankets and a white plastic bag that he said held all his belongings.

“We don’t feel any truce, we don’t feel safe,” al-Fayoumi said.

The IDF earlier called on residents to use the time provided by the truce to “stock up on needs and arrange affairs” instead of traveling to the north. The only movement allowed in the north would be for residents evacuating southward, the IDF said.

It is unclear how many of the 1.1 million people populating Gaza’s north before the evacuation remain there. United States Special Envoy David Satterfield earlier this month said between 350,000 and 400,000 were still in the north.

More than 1.7 million of the territory’s population of 2 million are internally displaced, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

Aid trickles in

As the brief truce holds, aid is being brought into the territory while it still can be.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said Friday that its teams had received two ambulances and 85 trucks from its Egyptian counterpart.

Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said in a statement that four fuel tankers and four tankers carrying cooking gas provided by the Israeli government had also crossed into Gaza through Rafah on Friday morning.

Homes, shelters and hospitals have been left without electricity in recent days and weeks, as the territory ran out of fuel needed to power generators.

The arriving aid is being distributed by UNRWA.

Palestinians on Friday called for a safe corridor that would allow them to cross north, gather their belongings, bury their dead and then return south.

“If they could just establish a crossing corridor for us, to go to our homes and come back,” said Agha.

More than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry there.

“Our people are gone. There is no one left,” Moharram said.

An innovative experiment flying aboard NASA’s Psyche mission just hit its first major milestone by successfully carrying out the most distant demonstration of laser communications. The tech demo could one day help NASA missions probe deeper into space and uncover more discoveries about the origin of the universe.

Launched in mid-October, Psyche is currently en route to catch humanity’s first glimpse of a metal asteroid between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft will spend the next six years traveling about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers) to reach its namesake, located in the outer part of the main asteroid belt.

Along for the ride is the Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration, or DSOC, which is carrying out a mission of its own during the first two years of the journey.

The tech demo was designed to be the US space agency’s most distant experiment of high-bandwidth laser communications, testing the sending and receiving of data to and from Earth using an invisible near-infrared laser. The laser can send data at 10 to 100 times the speed of traditional radio wave systems NASA uses on other missions. If wholly successful over the next couple of years, this experiment could be the future basis of technology that is used to communicate with humans exploring Mars.

And DSOC recently achieved what engineers called “first light,” the feat of successfully sending and receiving its first data.

The experiment beamed a laser encoded with data from far beyond the moon for the first time. The test data was sent from nearly 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) away and reached the Hale Telescope at the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory in Pasadena, California.

The distance between DSOC and Hale was about 40 times farther than the moon is from Earth.

“Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars,” said Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA, in a statement.

Sending lasers across space

First light, which occurred on November 14, happened as the flight laser transceiver instrument on Psyche received a laser beacon sent from the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California.

The initial beacon received by Psyche’s transceiver helped the instrument aim its laser to send data back to the Hale Telescope, which is located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Table Mountain.

“(The November 14) test was the first to fully incorporate the ground assets and flight transceiver, requiring the DSOC and Psyche operations teams to work in tandem,” said Meera Srinivasan, operations lead for DSOC at JPL, located in Pasadena, California, in a statement. “It was a formidable challenge, and we have a lot more work to do, but for a short time, we were able to transmit, receive, and decode some data.”

It’s not the first time laser communications have been tested in space. The first test of two-way laser communication occurred in December 2021 when NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration launched and went into orbit about 22,000 miles (35,406 kilometers) from Earth.

Since then, experiments have sent optical communications from low-Earth orbit and to the moon. And the Artemis II spacecraft will use laser communications to return high-definition video of a crewed journey around the moon. But DSOC marks the first time laser communications have been sent across deep space, which requires incredibly precise aim and pointing over millions of miles.

The initial test of the tech demo’s capabilities will allow the team to work on refining the systems used in the laser’s pointing accuracy. Once the team has checked that box, DSOC will be ready to send and receive data to the Hale Telescope as the spacecraft travels farther from Earth.

Future challenges

While DSOC won’t actually send scientific data collected by the Psyche spacecraft because it’s an experiment, the laser will be used to send bits of test data encoded in the laser’s photons, or quantum light particles.

Detector arrays on Earth can pick up the signal from Psyche and extract the data from the photons. This kind of optical communication could change the way NASA sends and receives data from its missions across deep space.

“Optical communication is a boon for scientists and researchers who always want more from their space missions, and will enable human exploration of deep space,” said Dr. Jason Mitchell, director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technologies Division within NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program, in a statement. “More data means more discoveries.”

As Psyche continues on its journey, more challenges await.

The DSOC team will be monitoring how long it takes for the laser messages to travel across space. During first light, it took only 50 seconds for the laser to travel from Psyche to Earth. At the farthest distance between the spacecraft and Earth, the laser is expected to take 20 minutes to travel one way. And during that time, the spacecraft will continue to move and Earth will rotate.

Meanwhile, the Psyche spacecraft continues to prepare for its primary mission, powering on propulsion systems and testing the scientific instruments it will need to study the asteroid when it arrives in July 2029. The mission could determine whether the asteroid is the exposed core of an early planetary building block from the beginning of the solar system.

The world’s biggest iceberg – more than twice the size of Britain’s capital city – is on the move after decades of being grounded on the seafloor in Antarctica.

The huge mass of ice broke away from the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf in 1986, calved and grounded on the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea floor almost immediately.

The iceberg, named A23a, is about 400 meters (1,312 feet) thick, and almost 4,000 square kilometers (1,544 square miles) in area. Greater London, by way of comparison, is 1,572 square kilometers (607 square miles).

A23a has held the “largest current iceberg” title several times since the 1980s, occasionally being surpassed by larger but shorter-lived icebergs, including A68 in 2017 and A76 in 2021, they added.

The iceberg, carried by ocean currents, will likely head eastward, and at its current rate is traveling five kilometers (three miles) a day.

Gilbert and Marsh added that while this particular iceberg probably broke away as part of the natural growth cycle of the ice shelf, climate change is driving changes in Antarctica’s ice and the continent is losing enormous quantities of ice every year.

The first group of hostages released by Hamas under a deal with Israel were safely returned on Friday, bringing to an end the first stage of the painstakingly negotiated arrangement between the warring sides with the help of foreign mediation.

The civilians included 13 Israeli women and children who had been captured by Hamas during its brutal cross-border raids on October 7 and held in the besieged Gaza Strip for 48 days amid worsening humanitarian conditions. All but one were abducted from the Nir Oz kibbutz, according to spokespeople for the kibbutz and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

The freed hostages were transferred from the Red Cross to Egyptian officials before being driven to Hatzarim Airbase in Israel, from where they are expected to be flown on to hospitals for medical checks.

Eleven foreign nationals were also released alongside the Israeli hostages: 10 Thai citizens and one Filipino citizen, according to a Qatar Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

The foreign nationals released by Hamas “all underwent an initial medical assessment” as they left Gaza “and their lives are not at risk,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said. The group is expected to meet with representatives from their country at Hatzerim Airbase and will be transferred to the hospital as well, Hagari said.

Here’s what you need to know about the released hostages:

Yafa Adar, 85

Adar is a founder of the Nir Oz kibbutz and is the oldest person to be taken hostage on October 7. A video of her being taken into Gaza on a golf cart driven by Hamas militants went viral shortly after her abduction, said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Kibbutz Nir Oz was devastated during the attack and more than a quarter of the community was killed or remains missing. “Her eldest grandson, Tamir Adar, a 38-year-old father-of-two, was also abducted, and is still held hostage,” the Nir Oz spokesperson said.

Margalit Moses, 77

The mother of three and grandmother of 10 is a retired biology teacher. She is also a cancer survivor who has diabetes, “fibromyalgia, and takes many additional medications,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel. The nature lover planned on traveling to Mozambique this winter.

Hana Katzir, 76

She is also a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz and the wife of the late Rami Katzir, 79, who was killed in their home. “A mother of three and grandmother of six. Her son Elad, 47 years old was also kidnapped and is still in Gaza,” said Nir Oz’s spokesperson.

Adina Moshe, 72

The retired educator and Nir Oz resident is a mother of four and grandmother of 12. Her husband David (Sa’id) Moshe was killed in their home on October 7.

Ruth Munder, 78

The Nir Oz resident, who is a retired hairdresser and seamstress, was abducted along with her husband, her daughter Keren and her only grandson, Ohad. Her son, Roee, was killed on October 7, the Nir Oz spokesperson said. Her 78-year-old husband still remains in Gaza.

“She met her husband Avraham in the kibbutz… Ruth is a very talented woman, she was the librarian of the kibbutz and the seamstress. She also knits, paints, and sews. She is retired. Ruth attends classes and family trips,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

Keren Munder, 54

The physical education teacher for children with special needs was born and raised in Nir Oz. She was abducted along with her only son, Ohad, and her parents, Ruth and Avraham, said the Kibbutz spokesperson.

Ohad Munder, 9

The kibbutz spokesperson for Nir Oz said Munder “came to Nir Oz to visit family” when he was abducted alongside family members.

Daniel Aloni, 45, and Emilia Aloni, 5

Daniel Aloni was among three women who appeared in a hostage video released by Hamas late last month. She came to Nir Oz to visit family and was abducted alongside her daughter Emilia. Her sister Sharon Aloni-Cunio and other family members were kidnapped and remain in Gaza, says the Nir Oz spokesperson.

On the day of the attack, “Daniel sent the last message to her family and said that there are terrorists in their house and was afraid that they would not survive it. Now Daniel and Emilia are on their way to Israel,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

Doron Katz Asher, 34, Raz Asher, 4, Aviv Asher, 2

Doron visited Nir Oz with her family and was kidnapped with her two daughters, Aviv and Raz, as well as other family members, including Efrat Katz. “They were recorded being taken to Gaza,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. She lives in Ganot Hadar and works as an accountant.

His aunt’s 79-year-old partner and another relative also were taken hostage, Roberts said. “Those endless thoughts about, ‘Where are they? How are they doing? What are they going through every minute of the day?’ That can really drive you insane,” said Roberts.

Channa Peri, 79

Peri, who lived in Kibbutz Nirim, immigrated to Israel from South Africa in the 1960s. She worked in a grocery store and is a mother of three – one of whom was murdered on October 7 and another kidnapped. “She has diabetes, and suffers severe vision loss in one of her eyes,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in a statement.

Further details have not yet been given on the foreign nationals who were released.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The first groups of Israelis and Palestinians have been released under a truce brokered between Israel and Hamas that brought a temporary halt to fighting in Gaza after weeks of conflict, officials said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed 13 Israeli hostages had returned to Israel on Friday, where they have undergone initial medical assessments.

And Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, which helped broker the agreement, confirmed that the Palestinian prisoners released as part of the deal were on the way to the West Bank.

The Red Cross, which transported the detainees on Friday from Gaza to the Rafah border with Egypt, said 24 hostages had been freed.

Ten Thai citizens and one Filipino citizen have also been freed under a separate agreement.

Among the Israelis freed are 5-year-old Emilia Aloni and Adina Moshe, who was seen being driven away on a motorbike after being abducted from her kibbutz during the October 7 Hamas attacks.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said that the 11 freed foreign nationals were returned to Israel alongside the Israeli hostages released on Friday night. “They all underwent an initial medical assessment at the Kerem Shalom crossing, and their lives are not at risk,” he said in a briefing.

Levy said the initial release still left 215 hostages inside Gaza. “None of us here are free until all of them are free. We are committed to that pledge: There will be no one left behind,” he said.

Israel also released 39 Palestinian prisoners in return on Friday. Buses reported to be carrying some of the released Palestinian women and teenagers were seen leaving Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.

The Red Cross later confirmed that the group leaving Ofer prison had arrived in Ramallah.

The Israeli intelligence service Mossad and the IDF have received the second list of Israeli hostages due to be released on Saturday as part of the framework agreed on with Hamas, the office of Israel’s Prime Minister said in a written statement on Friday.

Security officials are reviewing the list of names, the statement said.

Israel’s Hostage Coordinator Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch has given the information to the families of the hostages, the statement added.

The list will not be released to the public until the hostages are safely in Israeli hands.

A major breakthrough

The hostages and Palestinians released Friday were the first to be freed through a deal between the two sides that was finalized after weeks of tense negotiations and took several agonizing days to come into effect.

The agreement, accompanied by a four-day truce between Hamas and Israel, represents a first major diplomatic breakthrough in the conflict.

The released hostages entered Egypt through the Rafah crossing before returning to Israeli soil, where they were taken to local hospitals.

Well-wishers gathered outside the Schneider Children’s Medical Center near Tel Aviv cheered and clapped as helicopters carrying now-freed hostages arrived on Friday after dark. Eight freed hostages from three families are receiving care at the center, according to hospital staff.

“I needed to see this moment with my own eyes,” the nurse, who asked to be identified by her first name, Elena, said.

The concurrent halt in fighting began at 7 a.m. local time (12 a.m. ET) Friday, and is believed to be holding – the first sustained break in hostilities after nearly seven weeks of conflict.

It allowed relief to flow into the besieged Gaza Strip, marking some respite in a humanitarian crisis that has worsened by the day. The United Nations said Friday that 137 trucks of humanitarian goods were offloaded in Gaza on day one of the pause in fighting, marking the largest aid convoy that has moved into the strip since October 7.

“During the humanitarian pause that has been in place since this morning, the UN was able to scale up the delivery of humanitarian assistance into and across Gaza,” a statement from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

On Friday, 129,000 liters of fuel and four trucks of gas were also delivered to Gaza, OCHA said.

OCHA added that “21 critical patients were evacuated in a large-scale medical operation from the north of Gaza.” It is not clear where those patients were taken.

While Friday saw the first batch of Israeli hostages released, more – totalling 50 women and children – are expected to be exchanged over the course of the truce.

Speaking to reporters Friday, President Joe Biden called the release of hostages a positive start and sounded an optimistic note on the potential release of Americans in the coming days.

Biden said he expected soon to get the names of the hostages who will be released on Saturday, saying he was “hopeful it’s as we anticipate.” He said he did not know when the three Americans who fall into the category of women or children, including now-four-year-old Abigail Edan, would be released, but confirmed he still does “expect it to occur.”

“My hope and expectation is it’ll be soon,” he said of the possibility of the three Americans being released.

Pressure on the Israeli government had been mounting for weeks from the families of the hostages, who have demanded answers and action from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

International calls for more humanitarian support for the people of Gaza had also been growing, and the truce is expected to give respite to those in the enclave who have endured weeks of attacks. The number of people killed since October 7 now stands at 14,854, according to information from Hamas authorities in the Strip.

Hundreds of people gathered outside Tel Aviv’s Museum of Art – in an area that has gained the name “Hostages Square” among locals – ahead of the announcement, waiting anxiously for confirmation of the hostages’ safe transfer.

Tamar Shamir said she had been visiting the square for weeks to show support for the hostages and their families. While the confirmation of the transfer came as a relief, she said more needed to be done to return all hostages taken by Hamas.

The IDF warned residents against attempting to travel from the south to the north, where combat between Hamas and Israel has been concentrated.

Israel declared war on Hamas following the militant group’s bloody October 7 terror attack on its territory, in which more than 1,200 people were killed – the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

Militants were holding more than 200 people captive inside Gaza from mass abductions that day, according to figures from the Israeli military.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Last year, Sara Sabry made history when she became the first Egyptian, the first Arab woman and the first African woman in space.

With a background in engineering and bioastronautics she was chosen by the non-profit Space for Humanity to join five other space tourists aboard a Blue Origin NS-22 sub-orbital space flight in August 2022.

Now pursuing a Ph.D. in aerospace sciences at the University of North Dakota, the 30-year-old says she came to the realization that in space research, “very few opportunities exist if you’re not from the West.” In response, she founded Deep Space Initiative, a Colorado-based non-profit that aims to increase access to the space industry for people of all backgrounds, by providing opportunities for research and education.

The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Sabry: I got the call on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, 50 years since the first humans landed on the moon so it’s a very special day for me. Coming from where I come from, and thinking it was always going to be impossible, it was difficult to process, but it’s something I hold with a lot of responsibility.

Sabry: It’s the most exciting thing I have ever experienced. When you lift off, you feel this engine igniting beneath you, and very quickly, the sky turns from light blue to darker blue to purple and then black, and that’s the only thing telling you that you’re in space. It was beautiful and I was in awe. I think it’s the most liberating feeling anyone can experience.

Sabry: It was very confusing, because we have not biologically evolved to see Earth from space. We tend to look at space as if it’s something that’s so far away and separate from Earth but it’s not. I think realizing that, when it clicks, it really does break your reality, and your understanding of the world changes. For me personally, it has changed a lot more than I thought it would in terms of the scale of the world and how interconnected everything is.

Sabry: The more I got involved with the space field, the more problems I saw, and very few opportunities exist if you’re not from the West, if you’re not a US citizen or if you’re not European. My company allows people from different nationalities to work on those problems from different perspectives. Currently, we have around 205 people from 28 different nationalities working on 53 space projects, which is really cool to see.

Sabry: Deep Space Initiative has been running several research programs, and it’s exciting to see the quality of work that comes from these groups that would not have otherwise had the opportunity to work on this. They’re incredibly intelligent, incredibly qualified people to be conducting this research, but you can see how all they needed was this opportunity. All they needed was for someone to believe in them. I hope that this initiative provides this belief to a lot more people around the world.

Sabry: By limiting the opportunities that exist for people of certain nationalities, we are also limiting how many problems we’re able to solve, and the progress that can be made in a specific field. As for representation, it shows you anything is possible. Becoming an astronaut was not something I dreamed about as a child because it wasn’t something I was exposed to, and we were always told it wasn’t for us. Having representation says “someone else has done this, and you can too.”

Sabry: When I was sitting in that rocket, I wasn’t flying to space alone, I was taking my country and my continent with me. It really felt like a step forward not just for me personally but for a lot of other people. For them to be able to have that representation, to see that things are possible even though we’re told it’s not. I wake up every morning and I make all my decisions to serve that purpose. I have dedicated my life for this mission.