Seventeen hostages, including 13 Israelis, held in the Gaza Strip for weeks, were freed on Saturday night, the second day of a truce between the Palestinian movement Hamas and Israel that is expected to release 39 Palestinian prisoners in exchange.
The truce, the result of a Qatar-brokered agreement, offered another day of respite to residents of the besieged territory after seven weeks of war, triggered by a bloody and unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist movement, announced that it had handed over 13 Israeli hostages and four foreigners to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) shortly before midnight.
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Egyptian television footage showed the convoy of hostages passing into Egypt through the Rafah crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, and Israel later reported that they had arrived in Israel. Four Thai hostages, who are not part of the deal, were also released, according to Egypt.
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The Palestinian Islamist movement announced in the afternoon that it was delaying the release of this second group of hostages, after a first one on Friday, accusing Israel of violating the agreement, particularly concerning the delivery of humanitarian aid to the north of the territory.
The Israeli military, which has denied any breach of the agreement, considers the northern third of the Gaza Strip to be a combat zone that it says is home to the infrastructure center of Hamas, which seized power in 2007. It has ordered the population to leave and is preventing anyone from returning.
Despite the warning, thousands of displaced Gazans took advantage of the pause in fighting to try to return to their homes in the north. And according to Hamas' Health Ministry, seven of those people were wounded by Israeli fire on Saturday.