it is the top of the hour. i m brianna keilar with boris sanchez in washington. wolf blitzer is live from tel aviv. intense talks are under way to try to extend the truce between israel and hamas. here in just hours the current deal is set to expire. we want to show you some video with a red cross convoy entering the rafah crossing. this, as we wait for hamas to release in the group of hostages today. wolf? as these critical talks continue, we know the top u.s. hostage envoy is here in israel and that secretary of state antony blinken is headed here in the coming days. he ll be in israel very soon. a key mediator from qatar says they re hopeful an extension will be announced soon. cnn is following all these angles of a very fast developing situation. let s start with oren liebermann. what have you learned? reporter: two israelis were handed over to the red cross from hamas and will have a quick medical checkup and to the hospital for fourth evaluations. it s impor
you are live with us in the cnn newsroom. we are live in tel aviv. we continued our breaking news coverage, as israel welcomes home a second group of hostages, released earlier today. this was the extraordinary scene that you see right there at the crossing from gaza, into egypt. we witness those hostages finally making their way out of gaza, the other way from internationals the red cross. we also watched that those hostages finally arrived in tel aviv. it is there where they will be reunited with their families after more than seven weeks in captivity. we are still waiting on more hostages to arrive at that hospital. that should be moments from now. as part of the deal involving a four day pause in the fighting, which we are halfway through, more than three dozen palestinians were also released from israeli prisons, both yesterday and today. katelyn collins is here with me from tel aviv. she has been bringing us up-to- the-minute coverage of this ongoing process exchange.
In a repeat of scenes over the past six days during a humanitarian pause in hostilities, the civilians were released to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and driven in vehicles to Israel.