Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at setbacks to the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal, NATO military aid pledges to Ukraine, and Madagascar’s military coup.

‘Until the Last One’

One of the bodies that Hamas returned to Israel this week was not one of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza over the last two years, the Israeli military said on Wednesday. It is still unclear whom the wrongly identified person is, but such a mix-up could threaten the barely 5-day-old cease-fire deal and reignite conflict in the territory.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at setbacks to the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal, NATO military aid pledges to Ukraine, and Madagascar’s military coup.

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‘Until the Last One’

One of the bodies that Hamas returned to Israel this week was not one of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza over the last two years, the Israeli military said on Wednesday. It is still unclear whom the wrongly identified person is, but such a mix-up could threaten the barely 5-day-old cease-fire deal and reignite conflict in the territory.

As part of the U.S.-brokered cease-fire agreement, Hamas released all 20 living hostages on Monday as well as the bodies of eight others (four on Monday and four on Tuesday) in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Hamas is expected to return the remains of at least two more killed captives on Wednesday, which would bring the total number of bodies still needing to be released to at least 18.

Hamas’s failure to return all of the killed hostages by Monday, though, has angered top Israeli officials. “We will not compromise on this and will not stop our efforts until we return the last deceased hostage, until the last one,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

On Tuesday, Israel threatened to cut the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza over Hamas’s slow return efforts despite aid delivery guarantees being stipulated in the cease-fire deal. However, the release of four more bodies later that day appeared to convince Israel to authorize the entrance of humanitarian assistance. According to the Egyptian Red Crescent, at least 400 trucks carrying food, fuel, and medical supplies were bound for Gaza on Wednesday, and Israeli officials have resumed preparations to reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

“Throughout this crisis, we have insisted that withholding aid from civilians is not a bargaining chip,” United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said, alluding to Israel’s past restrictions on the flow of aid into Gaza. Since the war began in October 2023, more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed, hundreds of thousands of others have required humanitarian aid, and nearly all of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have been displaced.

Although Israel has publicly denounced Hamas’s slow hostage return efforts, many officials have privately recognized that it could take the militant group a longer time to return the rest of the bodies, as they may be buried under rubble or in areas that Hamas no longer has access to. According to U.N. satellite imagery, more than 80 percent of Gaza’s structures have been damaged or destroyed.

This is not the first time that Hamas has handed over the wrong individual. In February, Hamas returned the body of a person it claimed was 32-year-old Shiri Bibas as part of a cease-fire and hostage release deal that Israel unilaterally broke just weeks later. But DNA testing found that the remains did not match Bibas’s and were instead that of a Palestinian woman. Bibas’s body was returned a day later—but not before Netanyahu vowed revenge for the “cruel and malicious violation.”

Yet prisoner exchange tensions are not only on the Israeli side. As part of the cease-fire deal, Israel is required to return 360 killed Palestinians. Among some of the 90 bodies that Israel has returned since Monday, Gaza health officials have documented what appears to be evidence of physical abuse. “There are signs of torture and executions,” Sameh Hamad, a member of a commission tasked with receiving the bodies at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, told The Associated Press. It is unclear if these individuals were killed while in Israeli custody or if they were taken from Gaza while Israeli troops were searching for hostages.

Today’s Most Read

What We’re Following

Military aid pledges. NATO defense ministers convened in Brussels on Wednesday to announce new, large-scale military aid commitments to Kyiv. The pledges are part of a fast-track program that allows European countries and Canada to purchase U.S. weapons and other equipment—such as air defense systems, radar systems, and ammunition—to give to Ukraine in its war against Russia. Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal has estimated that Kyiv will need $60 billion in foreign assistance in 2026 to stave off Moscow’s assault.

Among the pledges made on Wednesday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius vowed to purchase $500 million worth of U.S. weapons as part of a more than $2 billion aid package. Berlin will also separately provide Ukraine with “another two Iris-T air defense systems, including a large number of guided missiles, as well as shoulder-fired air defense missiles,” Pistorius said.

Meanwhile, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, and Sweden joined the fast-track program on Wednesday. According to NATO chief Mark Rutte, more than half of the alliance has now signed onto the initiative, adding that participation in the program will count toward members’ minimum defense spending requirement, which is 5 percent of their GDPs.

Military coup. A military coup in Madagascar on Tuesday toppled President Andry Rajoelina after weeks of Generation Z-led anti-government protests over high poverty rates and rampant power outages. Rajoelina, who said late Monday that he had left the country out of fear for his life, tried to dissolve Parliament’s lower house on Tuesday to avoid impeachment. However, the body dismissed the move, and lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to end his rule. Shortly after the impeachment vote, soldiers entered the presidential palace and announced that they were suspending the constitution and dissolving most of the country’s major political institutions. Rajoelina himself came to power via a military-backed coup in 2009.

Demonstrations kicked off last month, with thousands of young people condemning widespread water and power shortages as well as government corruption allegations. The protests mirrored other Gen Z-led movements in Africa, such as in Kenya and Morocco. Madagascar is one of the poorest nations in the world, with more than 75 percent of residents living below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

Following Tuesday’s coup (Madagascar’s fourth successful one since its independence in 1960), the armed forces said it would form a military-run council to “quickly” appoint a prime minister and that a constitutional referendum would be held in two years. On Wednesday, Col. Michael Randrianirina, the head of Madagascar’s elite Capsat military unit, announced that he would become the nation’s interim president.

Pause in fighting. Pakistan agreed to a 48-hour cease-fire with Afghanistan on Wednesday after violent border clashes over the weekend killed dozens of people. Both countries’ governments claim that the other insisted on the truce deal. Qatar and Saudi Arabia had pressured the two sides to stop fighting, with experts worried that this recent escalation would allow terrorist groups in the region, such as the Islamic State and al Qaeda, to regain a foothold.

Pakistan has long accused the Taliban of harboring militants who have killed hundreds of Pakistani security forces in recent years. Afghanistan has denied the allegations, even as U.N. experts have accused Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan of receiving financial support from the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

A series of diplomatic meetings this year, brokered by China, initially signaled a resetting of bilateral relations. But last Thursday, hostilities erupted when the Taliban blamed Pakistan for at least two explosions and an airstrike in Kabul—the same day that Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi traveled to India for the first time since the group seized power in 2021. Islamabad has neither confirmed nor denied its alleged involvement.

The ensuing clashes, which both sides have accused the other of instigating, have killed more than 200 Taliban fighters and around 58 Pakistani troops. Afghanistan has also accused Pakistan of killing more than 12 civilians and injuring over 100 others; Islamabad has denied targeting civilians.

Odds and Ends

How many cats are too many cats? For Cyprus, that number is 1 million—or roughly one feline for each of the nation’s residents. This month, Cypriot Environment Minister Maria Panayiotou announced that Nicosia would triple federal cat sterilization funding to 300,000 euros a year in a bid to crack down on the country’s overwhelming kitty population. But experts warn that this may not be enough to protect Cyprus’s ecosystem from this fierce, whiskered predator.