Two Israeli soldiers were also lightly injured during a car-ramming attack on a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, according to the army.
The Islamist movement Hamas claimed responsibility for an attack in Jerusalem on Thursday that left three dead after agreeing to extend a fragile truce with Israel by one day and release more Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protect “imperatively” civilians in the southern Gaza Strip if the truce falls apart.
This truce, scheduled until 05:00 GMT Friday, came into force on November 24 after more than seven weeks of devastating Israeli bombardments on the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for an unprecedented attack launched on October 7 by the Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil from Palestinian territory.
Adding to the volatility of the situation, three Israelis, including two women, were killed Thursday in an attack on a bus stop in West Jerusalem carried out by two Palestinians affiliated with Hamas, according to Israeli police.
The Palestinian movement, considered terrorist by the United States, the European Union and Israel in particular, said it was behind the attack.
In a statement, Hamas said the two attackers were members of its armed wing and originally from Sour Baher, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the city occupied and annexed by Israel.
Israeli police confirmed that the attackers, two brothers, had been shot dead.
Two Israeli soldiers were also lightly injured during a car-ramming attack on a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, according to the army.
Two Israeli hostages released
The Israeli army announced Thursday that “two Israeli hostages” were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the Gaza Strip, after being released under an agreement between Israel and Hamas.
Since Friday, the Palestinian Islamist movement has released around ten hostages every day and Israel has released three times as many Palestinian detainees from its prisons. “More Israeli hostages will be handed over to the ICRC in the coming hours”specifies the Israeli army.
One of the hostages released Thursday is Franco-Israeli Mia Shem, according to Israel.
The young woman was kidnapped from the Tribe of Nova music festival, in the Negev desert bordering the Gaza Strip, where 364 people were killed on October 7 and many others kidnapped and taken by the attackers to the Gaza Strip. .
According to the Forum of Families of Hostages or Missing, Mia Shem, who worked in a tattoo parlor, was there in the company of a friend, also Franco-Israeli, Elya Toledano, 27, whose fate is unknown.