The first hostages are to be released
Qatar: Ceasefire begins on Friday morning
November 23, 2023, 4:46 p.m
The hostage deal between Israel and Hamas is in place, but the ceasefire expected to begin today has been postponed. Now the schedule has been set: from Friday morning the guns should be silent. The first of 50 Hamas hostages is expected to be released a few hours later.
According to information from Qatar, the ceasefire and release of hostages agreed between Israel and the radical Islamic Hamas is scheduled to begin tomorrow, Friday. A spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry also said that Hamas would release a first group of 13 women and children in the afternoon.
Hamas confirmed the information about the start of the ceasefire. This will come into force at 7 a.m. (local time; 6 a.m. CET) and last four days, said the Essedin al-Kassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist Palestinian organization. A total of 50 hostages – women as well as children and young people under the age of 19 – are to be released during the ceasefire.
The Israeli cabinet approved the agreement with Hamas on Wednesday night. This stipulates that in return for the release of the 50 hostages, 150 Palestinian women and people under 19 will be released from Israeli prisons.
It was originally expected that the implementation of the agreements between Israel and Hamas would begin this Thursday. But then Israel’s security advisor Tzachi Hanegbi announced that negotiations were continuing and that the release of the hostages would not begin “before Friday.”
The war between Israel and Hamas has now been going on for almost seven weeks. On October 7, hundreds of fighters from Hamas, which the US and the EU have classified as a terrorist organization, entered Israel and committed atrocities there, mostly against civilians, including numerous women and children. According to the Israeli government, around 1,200 people were killed and around 240 people were taken hostage to the Gaza Strip.
In response, Israel began massive air and ground attacks on targets in the Gaza Strip. According to Hamas figures, which cannot be independently verified, more than 14,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since then, including more than 5,800 children.