The truce in the fighting between Israel and Palestinian Hamas will come into effect Friday morning and the first hostages will be released in the afternoon, Qatar announced Thursday.
“The humanitarian break will begin at 7:00 a.m. (05:00 GMT) on Friday (…) and the first group of civilian hostages will be released around 4:00 p.m. (2:00 p.m. GMT) the same dayr,” said Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari.
According to him, 13 women and children detained by the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip, members of the same families, will be released while a still unknown number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel will be released at the same time.
The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades, immediately confirmed that the truce would begin Friday morning for four days with a “complete cessation of military activities”, while Israel indicated that it had received a “first list of names” of hostages.
“Managers verify list details and are in contact with all families“, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, without specifying whether it was talking about all the hostages or those affected by the deal.
Qatar, a key mediator with Egypt and the United States, obtained an agreement on Wednesday on a renewable four-day truce, coupled with an exchange of 50 hostages held in Gaza for 150 Palestinians held in three Israeli prisons.
“A certain number of civilians will be released each day, reaching a planned total of 50 at the end of the four days.“, Majed Al-Ansari said during a press conference.
The agreement “provides for a total cessation of hostilities for four days,” he said, hoping that there will be no violation.
During the four days of truce, “there will be times when the sky will be clear, so that the release of the hostages can take place in a safe environment“, said the Qatari official, assuring that no drone will fly over the Gaza Strip during the process.
According to him, this period will also make it possible to “collect information” on the other hostages “to consider the possibility of further releases and thus extend the break”.
The war was triggered by an attack of unprecedented scale and violence in the history of Israel carried out on October 7 by Hamas on Israeli soil. According to the authorities, 1,200 people, the vast majority civilians, were killed.
Around 240 people were kidnapped on the day of the attack.
In retaliation, Israel, which has promised to “annihilate” the Palestinian Islamist movement, is relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip, where more than 14,000 people have been killed, including more than 5,800 children, according to the Hamas government which took action there. power in 2007.
