Israel, Hamas agree four-day truce, 50 hostages to be released

GAZA STRIP

Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war.

In the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the war, Israel, Hamas, the United States and Qatar sketched in a series of statements a carefully sequenced agreement that has been weeks in the making.

Under the Qatar-brokered deal, Palestinian militants will release 50 women and children kidnapped during their October 7 raids, in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians.

A senior US official said three Americans, including three-year-old Abigail Mor Idan, were among the 50 earmarked for staggered release from Thursday.

Qatar's foreign ministry confirmed the deal, saying that "a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons" would be released in exchange for the hostages.

"The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension," the ministry said in a statement.

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups are believed to be holding an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage in Gaza.

Israel said that to facilitate the hostage release it would initiate a four-day "pause" in its six-week-old air, land and sea assault of Gaza, but stressed this did not spell the end of the war.

For every 10 additional hostages released, there would be an extra day's "pause", the Israeli government said.

Hamas released a statement welcoming the "humanitarian truce" and said it would also see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails.

"The resistance is committed to the truce as long as the occupation honours it," a Hamas official told AFP.

Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group that took part in the October 7 attacks, had earlier told AFP the truce would include a ceasefire on the ground and a pause in Israeli air operations over southern Gaza.

Israel launched Operation "Swords of Iron" in Gaza in retaliation for the worst attacks in its history, vowing to secure the release of the hostages and to destroy Hamas.

According to the Hamas government in Gaza, the war has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved the accord Wednesday after a near-all-night meeting, in which he told reticent ministers this was a "difficult decision but it's a right decision."

The cabinet's sign-off was one of the last stumbling blocks after what one US official described as five "extremely excruciating" weeks of talks involving the US Central Intelligence Agency, Israel's overseas spy agency Mossad, Egyptian intelligence, and leaders in Doha, Cairo, Washington, Gaza and Israel.