Juliet Jacob Ochenje
Fifty women and children held hostage by Hamas and other groups in Gaza since 7 October are to be released in a four-day ceasefire deal with Israel brokered by Qatar with the support of the US.
A United States official said three Americans would be among those freed, including a girl who turns four this week, and that the first release should come by Thursday.
According to Hamas, Israel will release 150 Palestinian prisoners, all women and children, from Israeli jails and allow hundreds of aid trucks a day to cross the Rafah border with Egypt, providing humanitarian supplies to Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel will cease air sorties in southern Gaza and restrict them to six hours a day in the north, according to the Hamas account of the deal, which also says Israeli forces will not bring military vehicles into Gaza during the ceasefire, nor try to detain anyone.
The Israeli government said the ceasefire would be extended by a day for every 10 additional hostages released.
The agreement temporarily pauses a war that has lasted more than six weeks so far. It has cost the lives of 14,128 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the government’s media office in Gaza, and more than 1,200 people in Israel, most of whom were victims of the surprise Hamas cross-border attack on 7 October.
However the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Nethanyahu, said there should be no confusion that the ceasefire is the end of the war.
He said, ‘There is a lot of nonsense talk, as if after the cease fire for the release of the hostages, we will stop the war. So I will like to clarify, we are at war, and we will continue to fight until we reach our goals.”
