A four-day temporary ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement came into effect in the Gaza Strip at 7:00 local time (06:00 CET), Israeli media and world news agencies reported. In the afternoon, at around 15:00 CET, they expected the release of the first 13 of the 50 hostages held by Hamas in Israel. In return, today Israel must release 39 of 150 Palestinian prisoners from their prisons. According to Reuters, no artillery attacks, bombings or rocket attacks have been reported since the ceasefire began.

The “humanitarian pause”, negotiated with the help of Qatar, Egypt and the United States, comes as the war between Israel and Hamas enters its 49th day, AFP recalled this morning.

Along with the ceasefire, according to a spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, which helped broker the deal, humanitarian aid will begin to flow to the Gaza Strip, although he said it is only a “small part” of the war-torn territory. need. Qatar wants the cessation of hostilities to eventually lead to a permanent ceasefire. Several other Arab countries expressed similar wishes on Wednesday. According to Reuters, about an hour and a half after the ceasefire declaration, the first trucks carrying humanitarian aid crossed the crossing at Rafah on the border with Egypt.

Hours before the start of the ceasefire, sirens warned of rocket attacks on Israeli villages bordering the Gaza Strip. According to the Times of Israel (ToI) website, there were reports overnight of intensive Israeli shelling in Gaza as the army sought to capitalize on its campaign against Hamas in the final hours before the start of the ceasefire. In the morning, the Israeli army said that its troops had achieved “operational deployment on the ceasefire line”.

The BBC News server also reported Israeli airstrikes carried out less than an hour before the ceasefire was announced.

The Israeli army distributed leaflets in the Gaza Strip this morning, warning residents not to return to their homes in the north, as the area remains a war zone despite the ceasefire that has been announced, wrote the ToI website. According to him, Palestinian officials asked displaced Gazans to return to their homes after the start of the ceasefire.

“The first thing I want to do is sleep,” Khalid Loz told Al Jazeera before the start of the announced four-day fighting pause. “I’m tired of the constant bombing,” he added. Like many other Gazans, he sees the cessation of fighting as the first opportunity to rest. “We want to provide water for our homes, we want to go home with the necessary goods, instead of empty shops where we can’t find what we need,” he said.

Israel launched a massive bombardment and then a ground operation in Gaza in response to attacks in which Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and took more than 200 hostages in the Gaza Strip. According to Hamas authorities, Israel’s actions have claimed more than 14,000 human lives, but this information could not be independently verified. It is the rising number of civilian casualties that has led to increasing calls to end the humanitarian conflict in recent weeks.