Israel and Hamas started a four-day ceasefire on Friday with the militants set to release 13 Israeli women and child hostages later in the day and aid to flow into the besieged Gaza enclave, the first pause in the near seven-week-old war.
The truce began at 7am (4pm AEDT), involving a comprehensive ceasefire in north and south Gaza, and was to be followed by the release of some of the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas during the Islamists' 7 October attack inside Israel, mediators in Qatar said. A number of .
A Palestinian official said that Israel would release 39 Palestinians prisoners, among them 24 women and 15 teenaged males, in the occupied West Bank in exchange for the 13 hostages due to be freed from the Gaza Strip by Hamas.
The inmates, all of them from the occupied West Bank or Jerusalem, will be handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross at Israel's Ofer military jail around 4pm (Saturday, 1am AEDT), said Qadura Fares, Palestinian commissioner for prisoners.
That would coincide with the planned handover at the Gaza-Egypt border of 13 women and children who were among some 240 people taken hostage by Hamas gunmen during a deadly 7 October rampage in southern Israel.
"After the Red Cross receives the (Palestinian) prisoners, the ones from Jerusalem will go to Jerusalem and the ones from the West Bank will gather in Betunia municipal council where their families will be waiting,” Fares told the Reuters news agency.
Palestinians walking past the rubble of destroyed houses following overnight Israeli airstrikes in the east of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday. Source: AAP, EPA / Mohammed Saber
Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen TV reported that no sounds of bombing were heard in Gaza since the start of the truce. But it said Israeli forces were preventing residents from returning to their homes in the densely populated northern part of the enclave.
Soldiers opened fire in one incident, Al Jazeera said, but there was no indication that it resulted in casualties.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which had earlier issued a call on Palestinians to stay away from the northern Gaza Strip, which it described as a "dangerous war zone".
A Reuters correspondent saw dozens of Israeli military vehicles, including tanks, moving away from the Gaza Strip. Several soldiers in the armoured column said they had been pulled out of the Palestinian territory.
Sirens sounded in two Israeli villages outside the southern Gaza Strip, warning of possible incoming Palestinian rockets. An Israeli government spokesman said Hamas had carried out a rocket launch in violation of the truce but there were no immediate reports of damage.
In Khan Younis town in southern Gaza, where streets were filled with people, Palestinian Khaled Abu Anzah told Reuters: "We are full of hope, optimism, and pride in our resistance. We are proud of our achievements, despite the pain this caused."
Fighting had raged in the hours leading up to the truce, with officials inside the Hamas-ruled enclave saying a hospital in Gaza City was among the targets bombed. Both sides also signalled the pause would be temporary before fighting resumes.
Ambulances on a road near an Israeli tank during an Israeli army ground operation in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Israel's military said its troops would stay behind a ceasefire line inside Gaza Source: AAP, AP / Victor R. Caivano
Aid trucks enter Gaza
The Indonesian hospital was reeling under relentless bombing, operating without light and filled with bedridden old people and children too weak to be moved, Gaza health officials said. Al-Jazeera quoted Mounir El Barsh, the Gaza health ministry director, as saying a patient, a wounded woman, was killed and three others injured.
Additional aid would start flowing into Gaza and the first hostages, including elderly women, would be freed at 4pm (Saturday, 1am AEDT), with the total number rising to 50 over the four days, Qatar's foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said in Doha.
Aid trucks were entering the Gaza Strip from Egypt around 1-1/2 hours after the truce began, Reuters TV footage showed. Two of the trucks, representing Egyptian organisations, sported banners that said, "Together for Humanity." Another said: "For our brothers in Gaza."
Egypt has said 130,000 litres of diesel and four trucks of gas will be delivered daily to Gaza when the truce starts, and that 200 trucks of aid would enter Gaza daily.
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid enter the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing with Egypt on Friday. Source: Getty, AFP / Said Khatib
Hamas confirmed on its Telegram channel that all hostilities from its forces would cease.
But Abu Ubaida, spokesperson for Hamas' armed wing, later referred to "this temporary truce" in a video message that called for an "escalation of the confrontation with (Israel) on all resistance fronts", including the Israeli-occupied West Bank where violence has surged since the Gaza war erupted almost seven weeks ago.
Israel's military also said fighting would resume soon.
"This will be a short pause, at the conclusion of which the war (and) fighting will continue with great might and will generate pressure for the return of more hostages. At least two months of warfare are expected," Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told naval commandos on Thursday, according to a Defence Ministry statement.
"Control over northern Gaza is the first step of a long war, and we are preparing for the next stages," Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said.
