Israeli and Hamas officials agreed on Wednesday to a four-day pause in the military conflict.
Both sides will have four days to release 50 hostages held in Gaza, 150 Palestinians from an Israeli prison. An agreement was also reached to deliver humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza.
Officials from Qatar, which is mediating the talks, as well as the US, Israel and Hamas have said for days that a deal was imminent.
Hamas is believed to be holding about 240 hostages taken during the militant offensive on Israel on 7 October, which Israeli figures say killed 1,200 people.
A statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said 50 women and children would be released during a four-day pause in fighting. For the release of 10 more hostages, the pause would be extended for another day, the statement said, but made no mention of the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. After an hours-long meeting, closed to the press, the following statement was issued:
Israel’s government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal.
Hamas officials said 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons. The truce will also allow hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza. Israel has pledged not to attack or arrest anyone in all areas of Gaza during the truce.
The agreement was the first truce in a war in which Israeli bombing has flattened much of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, killed 13,300 civilians in the tiny, densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million residents homeless.
Medical facilities, including Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, are barely functioning due to constant shelling and lack of supplies. Israel claims Hamas is hiding command centres and fighters in the hospitals, but Hamas and hospital staff deny this.
Israel also said Tuesday that its troops had surrounded the Jabaliya refugee camp, a congested urban area of Gaza City where Hamas has been battling advancing Israeli armoured forces. The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that an Israeli airstrike on parts of Jabaliya killed 33 people and wounded dozens more.
According to the UN, most Palestinians in Gaza are registered as refugees because they or their ancestors were displaced by the 1948 war when Israel was established. In southern Gaza, Hamas-linked media reported that 10 people were killed and 22 injured in an Israeli airstrike on a flat in the town of Khan Younis.
