Hi. Waited for over an hour. It did not permanently try delete any of the photos. After a while, I tried again. Still no progress. Quit the photos app and tried again. Also shut down the ipbone and re-started it. Still have the original problem. Even tried deleting from Settings -> general -> iPhone storage ->" Photos - Recently Deleted - Empty (save 23 GB)". When I did this, the " Photos - Recently Deleted - Empty (save 23 GB)" greyed out and a wheel appeared. Then after the phone sat for a while the wheel disappeared and the ""Photos - Recently Deleted - Empty (save 23 GB)" was no longer greyed out though no progress had been made in deleting the photos