A group of 24 hostages — 13 Israelis and a number of Thais — were released from the Gaza Strip on Friday, as a breakthrough deal between Israel and Hamas to pause fighting.

A group of 25 hostages — 13 Israelis and a number of Thais — were released from the Gaza Strip on Friday, as a breakthrough deal between Israel and Hamas to pause fighting in the war took hold after weeks of secretive diplomacy.

It took weeks of secret negotiations involving U.S., Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials, the heads of the CIA and the Mossad, and the personal intervention of President Joe Biden to convince a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a four-day cease-fire that is expected to free 50 hostages from Hamas.

U.N. officials and open-source data researchers say the full details of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza remain largely unknown.

There is growing tension between the Biden administration and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government over the future of Gaza and Israeli military tactics.

The president made the remark in response to a question from a protester at a campaign reception in Minneapolis.

The statements came as U.N. officials warned that aid groups, water treatment plants and bakeries in the enclave are running dangerously low on fuel.

After a white supremacist broadcast part of a 2019 attack that killed 51 Muslims in New Zealand, Facebook tried to bar the practice. Hamas still found a way.

The brutality and elation of Hamas militants as they killed Israeli civilians is evident in an Israeli government compilation of videos shown to about two dozen journalists in New York on Friday.

A compilation of videotaped confessions by Hamas militants released earlier this week shows the cruelty and cynicism of the group's leaders.

Most of Gaza’s people live in poverty but Hamas has no shortage of cash, thanks to money from Iran and Qatar and other donors, taxes, extortion and smuggling.