First Israeli hostages released as Gaza truce begins
Sunday the first three Israeli prisoners were released under an implored Gaza truce that was to be signed over 15 months of bloodshed in the Palestinian state. By the time the ceasefire came into effect in the morning, thousands of disempowered, war-weary Palestinians had already crossed the destroyed Gaza Strip to home.
The first of these 42-day ceasefires, reached by Qatari, US and Egyptian officials, will see a surge of desperately needed humanitarian aid flow into Gaza as 33 Israeli prisoners are to be let go in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held by Israel.
According to the Israeli military, the first three hostages, all women, "crossed the border into Israeli territory" yesterday afternoon.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum campaign group previously named the three women Emily Damari, Romi Gonen and Doron Steinbrecher.
The hostages are "with us and headed home", the military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
They’d been through an awful time, the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. "I know, we all know, they’ve been to hell. They are coming from the dark to the light, from slavery to liberation", he said.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian prisoners will be freed by Israel in return later on Sunday. Just minutes after the ceasefire ended, the UN reported that the first trucks with badly needed humanitarian aid had entered Palestinian territory.
The ceasefire is meant to deliver a definitive close of the conflict but there is still no second stage.
It went into effect almost three hours behind schedule. Israel’s forces were still conducting operation while the hold-up was going on, with the territorial civil defence ministry reporting 19 bodies and 25 injured from bombings.
Comments