Israeli soldiers stand on a tank, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, near Israel's border with Gaza in southern Israel. Reuters

Israel-Hamas start first truce in Gaza war, militants set to release 13 Israeli women and child hostages

Fighting raged on in the hours leading up to the truce, with officials inside the Hamas-ruled enclave saying a hospital in Gaza City was among the targets bombed

Israeli military sounds sirens in two villages near Gaza, warning of possible rocket launches

Israel and Hamas started a four-day ceasefire on Friday with the militants set to release 13 Israeli women and child hostages later in the day and aid to flow into the besieged Gaza enclave, the first pause in the near seven-week-old war.

The truce began at 7 am (0500 GMT), involving a comprehensive ceasefire in north and south Gaza, and was to be followed by the release of some of the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas during the Islamists’ Oct. 7 attack inside Israel, mediators in Qatar said. A number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons were to be freed in exchange.

Fighting raged on in the hours leading up to the truce, with officials inside the Hamas-ruled enclave saying a hospital in Gaza City was among the targets bombed. Both sides also signalled the pause would be temporary before fighting resumes.

The Indonesian hospital was reeling under relentless bombing, operating without light and filled with bedridden old people and children too weak to be moved, Gaza health officials said. Al-Jazeera quoted Mounir El Barsh, the Gaza health ministry director, as saying a patient, a wounded woman, was killed and three others injured.

Additional aid would start flowing into Gaza and the first hostages, including elderly women, would be freed at 4 pm (1400 GMT), with the total number rising to 50 over the four days, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said in Doha.

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