The first truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect at 7 local time (5 GMT), after more than a month and a half of war, as part of an agreement to the release of 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners. The ceasefire, which will last four days and could be extended to ten if Hamas hands over more kidnapped people, will also serve for the entry of humanitarian aid to the enclave.

After a night in which Israel continued its incessant attacks against the Gaza Strip and in which Hamas launched missiles against two of the evacuated kibbutzim near Gaza, the time has passed in which the two parties have agreed to temporarily stop their attacks. Today, the first 13 Israeli hostages of the 240 held by the Palestinian Islamist group, all of them women and children, are expected to be released at 4 p.m. local time (14 GMT), as announced by Qatar, one of the mediators of the truce.

“The criterion for prioritizing the hostages was purely humanitarian and we focused on putting women and children out of danger as quickly as possible,” said Majed al Ansari, the Qatari spokesman, who trusted in the fulfillment of the truce after appreciating “positivism and commitment” on both sides. For its part, the al-Qasam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, They celebrated that “humanitarian truce” that will allow the “prisoner exchange.”

“For every Zionist prisoner, three Palestinian prisoners will be released, including women and children,” they stressed. Hamas also confirmed that the agreement includes the daily entry of 200 trucks with humanitarian aidfood and medicine to distribute throughout the Strip, including the north, as well as the daily distribution of 4 trucks with fuel, vital for the electrical supply of the enclave.

The ceasefire is a respite for the devastated enclave, mired in the worst humanitarian catastrophe in its history, where there are already more than 14,500 deaths – more than 70%, mostly children and women –and more than 6,800 are missing under the rubble or their bodies lying on streets and roads, so the number of fatalities could be higher, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.