“All the prisoners being released today feel like family to us. They are part of us, even if they’re not blood relatives,” Amanda Abu Sharkh, 23, told AFP.
One freed detainee, Abdul Aziz Muhammad Atawneh, described prison as “hell, hell, hell”.
The next hostage-prisoner swap should take place on Saturday, a senior Hamas official told AFP.
International Committee of the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric called on all sides to “adhere to their commitments to ensure the next operations can take place safely”.
“NOTHING LEFT”
UN relief chief Tom Fletcher said 630 trucks carrying desperately needed aid had entered into Gaza in the hours after the start of the truce, with 300 of them headed to the north of the territory.
The truce is intended to pave the way for a permanent end to the war, but a second phase has yet to be finalised.
Thousands of Palestinians carrying tents, clothes and their personal belongings were seen going home on Sunday, after the war displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million.
The World Food Programme said it was moving full throttle to get food to as many Gazans as possible.
“We’re trying to reach a million people within the shortest possible time,” said its deputy executive director, Carl Skau.
The war’s only previous truce, for one week in November 2023, also saw the release of hostages held by militants in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas’s Oct 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Of the 251 people taken hostage, 91 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Sunday that the death toll in the war between Israel and Hamas had reached 46,913.
