Israel and Hamas will begin a four-day truce on Friday

DOHA/GAZA:

Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas will begin a four-day truce on Friday morning with a first group of 13 Israeli women and children hostages to be released later in the day, mediators in Qatar said.

The deal – the first in a brutal nearly seven-week war – will begin at 7am local time (0500 GMT) and will include a comprehensive ceasefire in northern and southern Gaza, Qatar’s foreign ministry said.

Additional aid will begin flowing into Gaza and the first hostages, including elderly women, will be freed at 4 p.m., bringing the total to 50 in four days, ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said in the Qatari capital. Doha.

The Palestinians were expected to be released from Israeli prisons, he told reporters. “We all hope that this truce will lead to an opportunity to begin a broader project to achieve a permanent truce.”

Hamas – which was expected to declare a truce with Israel a day earlier on Thursday only for negotiations to be delayed – confirmed on its Telegram channel that all hostilities by its forces would cease.

Israel had received an initial list of hostages to be released from the Gaza Strip and was in contact with families, the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement that did not confirm a truce had been agreed.

Qatar said an operations room in Doha would monitor the ceasefire and hostage release and had direct lines of communication with Israel, Hamas’ political office in Doha and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Also read: The secret negotiations that led to the Gaza hostage deal

Egypt – which is also involved in the mediation – is receiving lists of hostages and prisoners expected to be released and has called on both sides to respect the agreement, Diaa Raswan, head of Egypt’s state intelligence agency, said in a statement.

“While this is a hopeful moment, our work is not yet done. We will continue to work to secure the release of all remaining hostages from Gaza in the coming weeks,” a State Department official said in Washington.

Israel launched its devastating invasion of Gaza after gunmen from Hamas burst over the border fence, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages on October 7, according to Israeli estimates.

Since then, about 13,000 Gazans have been killed by Israeli bombardment, about 40 percent of them children, according to Palestinian health authorities. But they said it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep an up-to-date count as the health service buckled under Israeli bombardment.

International mediators want to turn the ceasefire agreement into a longer cessation of hostilities, but both sides have said they will return to fighting.

Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, referred to “this temporary truce” in a video call Thursday for “an escalation of confrontation with (Israel) on all resistance fronts,” including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where Violence has increased since the war broke out in Gaza.

“We need to know they’re alive”

Palestinians gather as others search for victims at the site of an Israeli attack on a house in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on November 23. PHOTO: REUTERS

Before the ceasefire, fighting continued at an even greater intensity than normal, with Israeli aircraft striking more than 300 targets and troops engaged in heavy fighting around the Jabalia refugee camp north of Gaza City.

An army spokesman said operations would continue until troops were ordered to stop. From across the border fence in Israel, clouds of smoke could be seen billowing over the northern Gaza war zone accompanied by the sounds of heavy gunfire and explosions.

In Rafa, at the southern end of the strip, residents combed with their bare hands the remains of a house that broke into a huge crater. A gray-bearded man mourned among the shattered masonry while another man put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. said neighbor Khaled Hamad Reuters it was the home of a primary school teacher, who was killed inside with his children.

Israel says Hamas fighters are using homes and other civilian buildings, including hospitals, as cover. Hamas denies this.

The delay in starting the truce marked another day of worry for Israeli relatives who say they still know nothing about the fate of the hostages and fear for Palestinian families trapped in the Gaza fighting zone.

“We need to know they’re alive, if they’re OK. It’s the bare minimum,” said Gilad Korngold, desperate for any information about the fate of seven of his family members, including his 3-year-old granddaughter, who is believed to be among the hostages.

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Palestinian media reported that at least 15 people were killed in airstrikes in Khan Younis, Gaza’s main southern city. Reuters could not independently verify tolls there.

Israel said its strikes last day hit “military command centers, underground terror tunnels, weapons storage facilities, weapons manufacturing facilities and anti-tank missile launch sites.” He posted video of troops on foot patrol through ruined streets surrounded by bombed rubble.

Israel said on Thursday it had arrested the head of Gaza’s largest hospital Al Shifa for questioning over his role in using the hospital as a command center for Hamas.

Hamas condemned the arrest of Shifa director Mohammed Abu Salamiyyah and other doctors who it said were trying to evacuate the remaining patients and wounded from the facility.

International alarm has focused on the fate of hospitals, especially in the northern half of Gaza, where all medical facilities have stopped functioning with patients, staff and displaced people trapped inside.

“For 11 days, we lacked water, food and medical supplies, except for two occasions when the Israeli occupation army brought sandwiches and water, which fed less than half the people in the hospital,” said Ahmed El Mokhalalati, a doctor in Shifa. . “Every day, patients die because of the Israeli occupation forces occupying the hospital.”