Israeli and Hamas officials said Tuesday they have reached an agreement to exchange the bodies of dead hostages for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, keeping their fragile ceasefire intact for at least a few more days.

Hamas says talks with Israel about further steps in the Gaza ceasefire deal are conditional on Palestinian prisoners being freed as agreed. Israel said on Sunday it was delaying the release of more than 600 Palestinians in return for six living and four dead hostages who had been freed,

Mousa Abu Marzouk, the head of Hamas’s foreign relations office, said he would not have supported such an attack on Israel had he known of the devastation it would wreak on Gaza.

The Israeli military on Monday said it killed a Hamas leader, Muhammad Shaheen, in the Sidon area of southern Lebanon. The army, in a statement said Shaheen was the head of the operations department of Hamas in Lebanon.

A top Hamas official says he now regrets endorsing the horrific Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel after witnessing the destruction of Gaza when the Jewish state retaliated.