Gaza:

A four-day ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict began on Friday, with prisoners being released in exchange for the first major relief in seven weeks of brutal Israeli bombardment that has killed at least 15,000 Palestinians. Is.

Both sides had agreed to silence the guns and stop the bombardment from 7:00 am (0500 GMT).

According to Qatari mediators, as part of the agreement, 13 women and children held captive in Gaza will be released at 4:00 pm (1400 GMT), followed by the release of several Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Within four days, at least 50 hostages are expected to be released, leaving an estimated 190 in the hands of Palestinian fighters.

In exchange, 150 Palestinian prisoners are expected to be released.

For Gaza’s more than 2 million residents, the agreement brings the promise of relief from weeks of Israeli bombardment.

At dawn, thousands of people who had fled to areas near Gaza’s border with Egypt were preparing to return to their villages.

Minutes after the ceasefire took effect, 16-year-old Omar Jibrin walked out of a hospital in the south of the region, where he and eight members of his family had taken shelter.

“I’m going home,” he told AFP as he began his journey.

However, Israeli warplanes over southern Gaza dropped leaflets warning people not to return to the north.

The leaflets read, “The war is not over yet.” “Returning to the North is prohibited and very dangerous!!!”

A convoy of Israeli military tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs) enter Israel as they leave Gaza during a temporary ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Photo: Reuters

About 15 minutes after the ceasefire began, sirens warning of incoming rockets began sounding in several communities along Israel’s border with Gaza, the Israeli military claimed, without giving further details.

It is impossible to confirm the exact number of casualties in the conflict as hundreds if not thousands of people remain buried under the debris of Gaza’s destroyed buildings. For many Palestinian families, the ceasefire came too late.

“The last thing he told me was that he was waiting for a ceasefire on Friday,” Gaza resident Fida Zayed, whose 20-year-old son Uday was killed in a recent airstrike, told AFP.

“The living here are the dead.”

Qatari officials said the “first batch” of 13 detainees released would be women and children from the same families.

Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, a Hamas official said the detainees would be released “by 4:00 p.m.”

Teams of Israeli trauma specialists and physicians are waiting for them – as well as specially trained soldiers who, according to guidelines, will promise to keep them safe.

An Egyptian security source told AFP that Israeli security officers, International Red Cross-Red Crescent staff and an Egyptian team would deploy to Rafah on the Egypt-Gaza border to collect the hostages, who would then be flown to Israel.

AFP has confirmed the identities of 210 of the nearly 240 people captured during Hamas’s daring cross-border attack on Israeli military posts and other targets.

There is little information publicly available about which hostages survive, or what conditions the hostages are being held in.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it had received the “first list of names” of people who were released and had been contacted by families. It did not specify who was on the list.

“We’ve already been on an emotional rollercoaster for 47 days and today is no different,” said Eyal Calderon, a cousin of Ofer Calderon, who is among those detained in Gaza.

Asked if he expected American baby Abigail Mor Idan to be among the first batch of hostages to be released, US President Joe Biden said: “I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majid al Ansari said Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails would also be released on Friday, after a list of names had been approved.

The agreement, Ansari said, included a “complete ceasefire with no attacks by air or land” and clearing the skies of drones “to allow the hostages to be released in a safe environment.”

Israel has published a list containing the names of a total of 300 Palestinians who could be released after the initial four-day ceasefire period.

These include 33 women and 267 children and youth under 19 years of age. The list also includes 49 members of Hamas.

Hamas’s armed wing agreed to a ceasefire deal, which also aims to provide aid to Gazans struggling with food, water and fuel shortages.

Smoke is seen rising in Gaza after an Israeli air strike before the start of a temporary ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Photo: Reuters

It said three Palestinian prisoners would be released for each of the hostages taken.

Palestinian prisoners would be released from three prisons in Israel and the occupied West Bank, then taken by buses to Ofer military camp, an Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that they were expected to be released by the evening. Hoping to go.

Most are from the West Bank but five are from the Gaza Strip.

Governments around the world welcomed the agreement, with some expressing hope that it would bring a permanent end to the war.

“This cannot be just a pause before the massacre begins again,” Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour told the Security Council.

However, Israeli officials say the ceasefire will only be temporary.

Israel’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Harzi Halevi, told visiting troops in Gaza, “We are not ending the war. We will continue the war until we are victorious.”

Hours before the break, fighting intensified.

Anti-rocket alarms were sounded in an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza border and explosions were heard and heavy gray clouds hung over northern Gaza, much of which has been reduced to debris.

Hamas health ministry official Munir al-Bursh told AFP that Israeli troops had raided an Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, though Israel did not immediately comment on any operations at the facility.

Israel has repeatedly said that the hospitals have been used by Hamas to hide underground command-and-control facilities – although Hamas and medical staff deny the claims.

In Jabaliya, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, a Palestinian doctor said at least 27 people were killed and 93 wounded on Thursday at a U.N.-run school where thousands of displaced civilians were sheltering.

On Israel’s northern border, Hezbollah said it had stepped up attacks from southern Lebanon, where Israeli bombing killed seven of its fighters, including members of an elite unit.

Since the Israel-Hamas conflict began, 109 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters, in deadly cross-border exchanges, and nine people have been killed in Israel, most of them soldiers, leading to the wider conflict. The apprehension has increased.