More than 47,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks, according to medical officials in Gaza. Nearly the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is homeless. Around 400 Israeli soldiers have also died.
The truce calls for fighting to stop, aid to be sent into Gaza and 33 of the nearly 100 remaining Israeli and foreign hostages to go free over the six-week first phase in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Many of the hostages are believed to be dead.
Israel’s prison service said early on Monday that 90 Palestinian prisoners have been released as part of the deal.
“All the terrorists were released from Ofer prison and the Jerusalem detention centre,” the service said, referring to the Palestinian prisoners, in a statement issued just before 1.30am.
In the north of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians picked their way through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal that had been bombed into oblivion in the war’s most intense fighting.
“I feel like at last I found some water to drink after being lost in the desert for 15 months,” said Aya, who said she had been displaced from her Gaza City home for more than a year.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, buses awaited the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention. Hamas said the first group to be freed in exchange for the hostages includes 69 women and 21 teenage boys.
The first phase of the truce took effect following a three-hour delay during which Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip.
