GAZA/CAIRO/JERUSALEM: Palestinians burst into the streets to celebrate and return to the rubble of their bombed-out homes on Sunday (Jan 19) after a ceasefire deal halted fighting in Gaza, and three female hostages freed by Hamas were reunited with their mothers inside Israel.
Armed Hamas fighters drove through the southern city of Khan Younis with crowds cheering and chanting. In the north of the territory, bombed into oblivion in the war’s most intense fighting, people picked their way on narrow roads through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal.
“I feel like at last I found some water to drink after being lost in the desert for 15 months,” Aya, a displaced woman from Gaza City who has been sheltering in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip for over a year, said after the fighting stopped. “I feel alive again.”
In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Israelis in a square outside the defence headquarters watched a live broadcast from Gaza showing the hostage release on a giant screen. The crowd cheered, embraced and wept as three female hostages could be seen getting into a Red Cross vehicle surrounded by armed Hamas fighters.
Soon after, the Israeli military said Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari had been reunited with their mothers at a meeting point inside Israel, close to the kibbutz and nearby music festival where they had been abducted in the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas raid that precipitated the war.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, buses were awaiting the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention. Hamas said the first group to be freed in exchange for the hostages includes 69 women and 21 teenage boys.
The first phase of the truce in the 15 month old war between Israel and Hamas took effect following a three hour delay during which Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip.
That last-minute Israeli blitz killed 13 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. Israel blamed Hamas for being late to deliver the names of hostages it would free, and said it had struck terrorists. Hamas said the holdup in providing the list was a technical glitch.
