Thirteen women and children will be released by Hamas on Friday in the first stage of a four-day ceasefire deal, according to negotiators in Qatar.
The bombing was originally agreed to halt a day sooner—on Thanksgiving in the U.S.—but that was set back by a last-minute hitch, which means northern Gaza was continuing to sustain heavy damage on Thursday.
“We’ve already been on an emotional rollercoaster for 47 days. Today is no different,” Eyal Kalderon, a cousin of one of the captives, told Agence France-Presse.
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A spokesman in the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, which has been helping to negotiate the prisoner swap, said the ceasefire would begin at 7 a.m. local time on Friday (midnight Thursday ET). Nine hours later, the first 13 prisoners are scheduled to be released by Hamas.
The remaining 50 hostages agreed in the deal will be released in stages, starting with women and children, over the coming days. Qatar said there would be an additional day of ceasefire for every additional 10 hostages freed.
AFP reported that the Israeli prime minister’s office has said authorities were in contact with the families of all the hostages being held in Gaza after receiving “a first list of names.” It did not immediately specify who was on the list.
Per the Telegraph, spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry has said hostages from the same family will be released together. Majed Al-Ansari told reporters in Doha: “If there were a group of hostages from the same family they will be released together in this first batch.”
The release of the hostages—who have spent six weeks fearing for their lives—will be a boon to the Israeli government which has come under intense pressure to bring the hostages home. Many Israelis blame Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government for failing to mitigate the scale of the Oct. 7 attack, and for responding slowly to negotiate the release of those who were dragged back to Gaza by the attackers.
Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said the bombing of Gaza would resume once the four-day pause was over. “We will continue it until we achieve all our goals,” he said, a message he said he had relayed to President Joe Biden personally in a call to the White House.
Israel has agreed to release 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages. A list of prisoners eligible to take part in the swap published by Israel suggests that most of them are teenagers imprisoned for minor offenses such as throwing stones.
Qatar also said the ceasefire will let a “larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid” enter the Gaza Strip but it is unclear how many trucks will be allowed into the enclave, which has been virtually cut off from medical, food and fuel supplies since Oct. 7.
