TEL AVIV, Israel — A four-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza went into effect early Friday. The temporary truce sets the stage for the first exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in the nearly seven-week conflict.
The agreement officially went into effect at 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET). It comes after weeks of Israeli bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Under the deal brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, later Friday Hamas will release some of the 240 hostages seized in their deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people. In return, Israel will free some of the Palestinian prisoners it holds.
Early reports of possible cease-fire violations
With the pause in the fighting, crowds of Palestinians were seen pouring into the streets in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. Some Palestinians in southern Gaza tried to return to their homes for the first time since the start of the conflict.
Both Hamas and Israel blamed each other for violations of the cease-fire. Israel's military says Hamas launched rockets into Israel 15 minutes after the start of the pause, and that Israeli forces didn't retaliate. The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry said that two people were killed and 30 wounded when Israeli soldiers opened fire on them in the early hours of the truce. An Israeli military official told NPR they were checking on the reports, and that any shooting would be a violation of the cease-fire agreement.
Israeli security forces say they've arrested more than 1,950 "wanted persons" since the start of the conflict. It says about 1,100 of the detainees are "associated with the terrorist organization Hamas."
In southern Gaza, Mohammed El Azzazi, a pharmacist from Rafah, expressed skepticism of the cease-fire. "There are no results from this pause, a pause where people can't return to their homes and injuries among people trying to go home," he told NPR.
Meanwhile, at the Qalandiya refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Raed Hhadeh, who teaches physics at a school in Ramallah, said he had mixed feelings about the cease-fire. "I feel good for the people to have rest from the bombardment, but this is not the solution," he told NPR. "It's a massacre. They are slaughtering children and this has to be stopped."
He said that Gazans returning to their homes in the east "won't find anything left."
The hostages-for-prisoners exchange is expected to occur in batches over the four days of the truce. Israel, which says it notified the families of the hostages expected for release on Friday, has not made a list public. The first exchange on Friday was to take place at 4 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET).
How the exchange is expected to unfold
Egypt’s state information service said Egyptian authorities are preparing to receive the released Israelis at the Rafah crossing that borders Gaza. It also announced that 12 Thai nationals held by Hamas would be freed, but the timing of that was not made clear. Thousands of Thais work as farm laborers in Israel. Officials believe 23 are being held by Hamas.
Palestinian prisoners were expected to be released at Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at about 150 Palestinian protesters Friday.
The Israeli military released images of a helicopter with two rows of noise-canceling headphones – ready to take the freed Israeli hostages to a military reception center. Then they'll be taken to hospitals where they'll be reunited with their families. Social workers will be on hand to break the news that some of their friends and relatives were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
At a news conference Friday morning, Israeli government spokesman Ziv Agmon said representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross are expected to take hostages across the border and hand them over to Israeli representatives, who will then confirm their identities. However, the exact location for the exchange has not been made clear.
After meeting with their families, the released hostages will be flown to five hospitals across the country, Agmon said, adding that adult abductees will be debriefed by Israeli security forces.
Israel has not said exactly how many hostages will be freed or how many Palestinians it will release. Hamas will free 13 hostages on Friday in exchange for 39 Palestinians. Hamas released a list of the prisoners it expected to be freed, all of whom come from the West Bank or East Jerusalem. Reportedly some 50 Israeli hostages may be released in exchange for 150 Palestinians over the course of the truce.
A senior Biden administration official said earlier this week that there are 10 dual U.S.-Israeli citizens unaccounted, three of whom could be released as part of the deal. Among those that could be released is a young girl whose parents were killed in the initial Hamas attack. The girl turns 4 on Friday.
Following last month's Hamas attacks, Israel vowed to destroy the militant group and responded with heavy air and ground strikes on Gaza. Israel now controls a large portion of Gaza's north.
Fighting continued in the lead-up to the cease-fire
In the hours leading up to the truce, Israel's military "intensified strikes" with intense ground battles against Hamas, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). A particular concern for the U.N. is the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza where about 200 patients and medical staff are still trying to evacuate. The U.N. says Israeli tanks surrounded the hospital and Gaza's Ministry of Health reported the hospital was struck again by Israeli fire.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces says it "has completed ... operational preparations according to the combat lines of the pause," adding that it had destroyed a tunnel complex it identified earlier this week under Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza.
"Over the last day and night, IDF troops on the ground, in the air, and at sea continued to strike terror targets, operate in different areas to locate suspicious structures and engage with terrorists," the military's statement said. "In addition, the forces struck a terror tunnel route, which was identified over the past few days."
About a half-hour before the cease-fire kicked in, an Israeli military spokesman released an Arabic-language video on social media addressed "to the population of sector Gaza."
"The cease-fire for humanitarian purposes is temporary," the spokesman said, insisting that northern Gaza, where the fighting has been concentrated, "is a dangerous war zone and it is forbidden to move around."
"For your safety, you must remain in the humanitarian zone in the south of the (Gaza) Strip," he said.
Humanitarian aid begins to trickle into Gaza
Large areas of Gaza have been devastated by Israeli air strikes and tanks since the conflict began, leaving much of the territory's 2.3 million people without electricity, food and clean water. According to UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency overseeing Palestinians, more than a million Gazans have been internally displaced as a result of the conflict.
According to Egypt's state information service, 130,000 liters (about 34,000 gallons) of diesel and four trucks of gas from Egypt will enter the Gaza Strip on the first day. "Humanitarian aid will begin to flow from Egypt to the Gaza Strip as soon as the truce agreement enters into force, where 200 trucks, loaded with food, medicine and water, will be entered daily for the first time since the start of the Israeli war on the Strip about fifty days ago," it said.
Israel confirmed Friday that four tanker trucks each of fuel and cooking gas had been transferred from Egypt to U.N. humanitarian aid organizations at the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza.
"This was approved by the government of Israel as part of the pause and the framework for the release of the hostages agreed with the United States and mediated by Qatar and Egypt," Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) office said in a statement. "The fuel and cooking gas are designated for operating essential humanitarian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip."
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, UNRWA said: "No matter how much they provide — it is difficult to meet demands of the whole" Gaza Strip, adding that "over-crowding and unsanitary conditions" were leading to the spread of disease.
NPR's Scott Neuman and Daniel Estrin reported from Tel Aviv and Brian Mann contributed from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.