Middle East crisis live: thousands gather for funeral of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah; Israel delays release of Palestinian prisoners | Lebanon

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of developments in the Middle East. It’s just after 10.20am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv – here’s the latest news.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Beirut this morning to attend the funeral of Hezbollah’s former leader nearly five months after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital.

Hassan Nasrallah was killed when Israel’s air force dropped more than 80 bombs on the militant group’s main operations room. His death was a major blow for the Iran-backed group that the late leader transformed into a potent force in the Middle East.

Officials from around the region including Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi were expected to attend the funeral, believed to be Lebanon’s largest in two decades.

Nasrallah will be laid to rest later on Sunday in Beirut while his cousin and successor Hashem Safieddine, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb a few days later, will be laid to rest in his hometown in southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Hamas released six Israeli hostages on Saturday, but Israel suspended the handover of more than 600 Palestinians it was due to free from its prisons in exchange, putting the five-week-old ceasefire agreement once more in jeopardy.

In a statement on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “In light of Hamas’ repeated violations – including the disgraceful ceremonies that dishonour our hostages and the cynical use of hostages for propaganda – it has been decided to delay the release of terrorists that was planned for yesterday [Saturday] until the release of the next hostages is ensured, without the humiliating ceremonies.”

In response, Ezzat El Rashq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said Israel’s claim that the hostages’ handover ceremonies are “humiliating” was false and a pretext to evade Israel’s obligations under the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

“Netanyahu’s decision reflects a deliberate attempt to disrupt the agreement, represents a clear violation of its terms, and shows the occupation’s lack of reliability in implementing its obligations,” he said in a statement.

In other developments:

• Earlier, Hamas released six hostages in Gaza. Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu were handed over to officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on stage in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Later, Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov and Omer Wenkert were released in Nuseirat in central Gaza. In the afternoon, Hisham al-Sayed, was transferred to the Red Cross without a ceremony and then crossed into Israeli territory. Mengistu and al-Sayed had been held by Hamas since they entered Gaza separately under unexplained circumstances about a decade ago. The family of al-Sayed described his return on Saturday as a “long-awaited moment”.

• Hamas has called the delay of the prisoners’ release “a blatant violation” of the ceasefire. “The [Israeli] occupation’s failure to comply with the release of the seventh batch of prisoners in the exchange deal at the agreed-upon time constitutes a blatant violation of the agreement,” Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif al-Qanou said, accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of “procrastination and stalling tactics”.

• The body of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has been identified, after the remains initially returned were found to belong to someone else. Hamas said Shiri’s body had been “mistakenly mixed” with others who were killed and buried under rubble in Gaza.

• The director of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Israel, Dr Chen Kugel, has said there is no evidence Shiri Bibas’ fatal injuries were caused by bombing. Hamas maintains she was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

• Hamas said on Saturday it was ready to move to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal and to carry out a comprehensive hostage-prisoner exchange to achieve a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. The comments were made before reports that Israel would be delaying the release of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

• A third mass polio vaccination campaign began in Gaza on Saturday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists reported, with the aim of delivering the first dose to nearly 600,000 children across the Palestinian territory. Scores of children under the age of 10 received the dose at a mosque in Jabalia, northern Gaza. The vaccination campaign involves multiple UN agencies, including the Israeli-boycotted Unrwa.

• British doctors who worked in Gaza during the war have issued dire predictions over the long-term health of Palestinian civilians, warning that large numbers of people will continue to die. The prevalence of infectious disease and multiple health problems linked to malnutrition, alongside the destruction of hospitals and killing of medical experts, meant mortality rates among Palestinians in Gaza would remain high after the cessation of Israeli shelling.