A ceasefire in Gaza began after a nearly three-hour delay as Hamas announced the release of hostages.
Latest:
- Hamas is preparing to release the first three women it took hostage in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
- Hamas says the delay in handing over the names of the hostages was “due to a technicality”.
- Hamas media reports that Israeli forces have begun to withdraw from a part of Gaza.
A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip came into effect on Sunday after a nearly three-hour delay, ending a 15-month war that has brought destruction and seismic political change to the Middle East.
In Gaza, residents and a medical worker said they had not heard any new fighting or military strikes for about half an hour before it was finally carried out.
Israeli airstrikes and artillery attacks killed 13 Palestinians between 8:30 a.m. local time and 11:15 a.m. local time, when the 42-day ceasefire was due to begin, Palestinian medics said.
Israel blamed Hamas for the delay after the Palestinian militant group failed to provide a list of the first three hostages to be released under the deal.
Hamas attributed the delay to “technical reasons”, but did not say what they were.
A Palestinian official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the delay was due to mediators asking for 48 hours of “calm” before the ceasefire could be implemented, but continued Israeli attacks until the deadline. list.
Two hours after the deadline, Hamas said it had sent the list of names, and Israeli officials confirmed receipt. Hamas named the hostages it will release on Sunday as Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari.
Israel did not immediately confirm the names. However, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, one of the groups representing families of hostages in Gaza, said it welcomed the news of their expected release and released brief profiles of the three women.
Steinbrecher, 31, and Damari, 28, were taken from their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel. Gonen, 24, from Kfar Vradim in northern Israel, was abducted from the Nova music festival in the desert near the Gaza-Israel border.
Canada’s Maureen Leshem tells The National she is waiting for the release of her cousin Romi Gone, who was kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023.
The much-anticipated ceasefire deal could help end the war, which has killed nearly 1,200 people since Gaza-controlled Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel said another 400 Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting in Gaza.
According to Gaza-based health authorities, Israel’s response has devastated much of Gaza and killed an estimated 47,000 Palestinians.
The war also sparked conflict across the Middle East between Israel and its arch-enemy Iran, which backs Hamas and other anti-Israel and anti-American paramilitary forces in the region.
Ahead of the agreed truce at 8:30 a.m. local time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it could not take effect until Hamas released the names of the hostages on Sunday.
Israeli military spokesmen said in separate statements on Sunday that its planes and artillery had struck “terrorist targets” in northern and central Gaza and that the military would continue to attack the strip until Hamas failed to meet its ceasefire commitments.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said that at least 13 people were killed and dozens were injured as a result of Israeli attacks. Medics said tanks were shelling Gaza City’s Zeytoun area, and airstrikes and tank fire also hit the northern town of Beit Hanoun, where residents who had returned on the eve of the cease-fire fled.
In a separate statement issued by the Israeli army, it was stated that the air raid siren sounded in the Sderot region in the south of Israel was a false alarm.
Palestinians return to Rafah
On Sunday morning, pro-Hamas media reported that Israeli forces began withdrawing from Gaza’s Rafah region to the Philadelphia Corridor along the Egyptian-Gaza border.
Palestinians displaced by the fighting could be seen returning to Rafah in southern Gaza, including 26-year-old Mohammed Abdo.
“I want to see my house; it’s all dust,” he told CBC News. “We lived in misery for a year and three months, we were disgraced, we moved not to one, but to 10 places.”
The three-phase ceasefire agreement followed months of negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, and came just before the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.
Its first phase will last six weeks, during which 33 of the 98 remaining hostages – women, children, men over 50, the sick and injured – will be released in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
They include 737 men, women and juvenile detainees, some of them members of armed groups convicted of attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, as well as hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza who have been held since the war began.
Phase 1 of the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas involves the release of 33 Israeli hostages, including women, children and men over 50 years of age, in exchange for approximately 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. Efrat Machikawa, the niece of 80-year-old Israeli hostage Gadi Moses, says her uncle will be part of this first phase, but his return date and current health status are unclear. Machikawa says she is glad the “suffering is over” and hopes Moses’ 14 grandchildren will see him again.
Hamas is set to release the first three female hostages to the Red Cross on Sunday in exchange for the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners.
According to the terms of the agreement, Hamas will inform the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) where its meeting point will be in Gaza, and the ICRC is expected to begin going there to collect the hostages. He told Reuters.
US President Joe Biden’s team worked closely with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to push through the deal.
As his inauguration loomed, Trump reiterated his demand for a quick deal and warned repeatedly that there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released.
But what will happen next in Gaza remains uncertain as there is no comprehensive agreement on the post-war future of the enclave, which has required billions of dollars and years of work to rebuild.
Although the truce’s stated purpose is to end the war altogether, it can easily be dismantled.
Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, has survived despite losing its top leadership and thousands of fighters.
Israel has vowed not to allow Hamas to return to power and has cleared large areas inside Gaza, widely seen as a step toward creating a buffer zone that will allow its troops to move freely against threats in the enclave.
The return of the hostages in Israel may ease some of the public anger against Netanyahu and his right-wing government over the Oct. 7 security failure that led to the deadliest day in the country’s history.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised speech on Saturday that his government considers the ceasefire with Hamas to be temporary and reserves the “right to return to battle”.
The war sent shockwaves throughout the region, sparking a conflict with the Tehran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement and bringing Israel into direct conflict with its arch-enemy Iran for the first time.
It also changed the Middle East. Iran, which has spent billions building a network of militant groups around Israel, has seen its “Axis of Resistance” disintegrate and failed to inflict more than minimal damage on Israel in two major missile attacks.
Hezbollah, once seen as the biggest threat to Israel with its massive missile arsenal, has seen its top leadership killed and most of its missiles and military infrastructure destroyed.
On the diplomatic front, Israel has faced anger and isolation over the death and destruction in Gaza.
Netanyahu is before the International Criminal Court arrest warrant in the International Court of Justice on war crimes allegations and separate genocide charges.
Israel reacted angrily to both cases, dismissing the charges as politically motivated and accusing South Africa, which brought the original ICJ case, as well as countries that joined it, of anti-Semitism.
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