The Red Cross reported that on Friday, the first day of the war’s first ceasefire, The Israel-Hamas fighters freed 24 hostages, including Thai farm laborers and Israeli women and children.
The International Red Cross announced that it had started an operation to help transfer captives in Gaza to Israel in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli jails, nine hours after guns fell silent for the first time in seven weeks. 24 captives had been set free in Gaza, it was later reported.
It is impossible to describe the intense suffering that bereaved family members experience. “We are relieved that some will be reunited after much suffering,” stated Fabrizio Carboni, the Near and Middle East regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
13 women and children were reportedly turned over to the Red Cross and an Egyptian security team to aid in their release, according to Israeli media reports. According to Reuters, neither the Israeli administration nor Hamas immediately confirmed this.
Omar Jibrin, 16, told AFP he was returning home after leaving a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, where he and eight family members had taken refuge.
The sound of war has given way to a cacophony of automobile horns and ambulance sirens in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, where a large number of Palestinians have fled.
The ceasefire, according to Israeli officials, is “a chance to breathe” after nearly seven weeks of fighting that started when Hamas breached Gaza’s militarized border, killing over 1,200 Palestinians and taking approximately 240 Israeli and foreign prisoners.
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