Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was visiting Qatar on Thursday to meet leaders of Tehran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas, a ministry statement said.

It said he would meet senior Hamas officials "to hail the victory of the Palestinian people through 16 months of legendary resistance" in the Gaza Strip.

Militants in the Gaza Strip released eight hostages on Thursday, handing them over to the Red Cross amid chaotic crowds as part of a swap that is set to see 110 Palestinians released from Israeli prisons later in the day.

Agam Berger, a 20-year-old soldier, was handed over first at a site in the heavily destroyed urban refugee camp of Jabaliya in northern Gaza, followed hours later by two more Israelis and five Thai farm workers who were handed over amid a chaotic crowd in the city of Khan Younis.

Israel's defense minister indicated Wednesday that the military plans to keep soldiers in the flashpoint city of Jenin for the foreseeable future, as Israeli forces have focused on a major crackdown in the northern West Bank during the ceasefire in Gaza.

Israel Katz pledged that the urban refugee camp in Jenin — long a bastion for Palestinian militancy — “will not return to what it was.”

The leader of Syria’s former rebels who toppled President Bashar Assad last month was named the country’s interim president on Wednesday as ex-insurgents also cancelled the existing constitution, saying a new charter would be drafted soon.

The appointment of Ahmad al-Sharaa, a rebel who was once aligned with al-Qaida, as the country’s president “in the transitional phase” came after a meeting of the insurgents in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

A list of more than 100 Palestinian prisoners that Israel is set to release on Thursday in exchange for three hostages includes Zakaria Zubeidi, a prominent former militant leader and theater director whose dramatic jailbreak in 2021 thrilled Palestinians and stunned the Israeli security establishment.

Zubeidi once led the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed group affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority — which carried out deadly attacks against Israelis during a Palestinian uprising between 2000 and 2005.

Palestinian health authorities said an Israeli airstrike in the northern West Bank has killed at least 10 people late Wednesday.

The Israeli military said the strike by a warplane targeted a Palestinian militant cell in the area based on intelligence.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had received a list of hostages, held by Hamas, to be released on Thursday as part of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

"Israel received the list of hostages who are supposed to be released from Hamas captivity tomorrow," the prime minister's office said in a statement on Wednesday, adding further details would be given "after the families are updated".

The Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank overnight and into Wednesday.

A 23-year-old man was shot dead in Tulkarem and a 25-year-old man was killed in a strike on Jenin, where Israel launched a large operation earlier this month.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Wednesday that the forced displacement of Gazans is an "injustice that we cannot take part in", after U.S. President Donald Trump floated a plan to move Palestinians from the territory to Egypt and Jordan.

"The constants of Egypt's historic position on the Palestinian cause can never be compromised," Sisi said during a news conference with Kenyan President William Ruto in Cairo.

Syria's new authorities on Wednesday urged Israel's withdrawal from Syrian territory it occupied in the Golan Heights after president Bashar al-Assad's ousting, during talks with U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix, state media reported.

During Lacroix's meeting with Syria's foreign and defense ministers, "it was confirmed that Syria is ready to fully cooperate with the U.N.", the SANA news agency said.