Israel and Hamas entered a four-day ceasefire on Friday with the Palestinian group set to release the first group of hostages later in the day and increased aid to flow into the besieged Gaza Strip, the first pause in a nearly seven-week-old war.
The truce is due to begin at 7am (0500 GMT) and involves a comprehensive ceasefire in north and south Gaza, followed by the release of some of the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas during their Oct. 7 attack inside Israel, mediators in Qatar said.
But fighting raged on in the hours leading up to the truce, with officials inside the enclave saying a hospital in Gaza City was among the targets bombed. Both sides also signalled the pause would be temporary before fighting resumed.
Additional aid would start flowing into Gaza and the first hostages including elderly women would be freed at 4pm (1400 GMT), with the total number rising to 50 over the four days, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said in Doha.
Egypt said 130,000 litres of diesel and four trucks of gas will be delivered daily to Gaza when the truce starts, and that 200 trucks of aid would enter Gaza daily.
Palestinians were expected to be released from Israeli jails, the Qatari spokesperson told reporters. “We all hope that this truce will lead to a chance to start a wider work to achieve a permanent truce.”
Hamas confirmed on its Telegram channel that all hostilities from its forces would cease.
But Abu Ubaida, spokesperson for Hamas’ armed wing, later referred to “this temporary truce” in a video message that called for an “escalation of the confrontation with (Israel) on all resistance fronts”, including the Israeli-occupied West Bank where violence has surged since the Gaza war erupted almost seven weeks ago.
Israel’s military said its troops would stay behind a ceasefire line inside Gaza, without giving details of its position.
