Joyous Palestinians have rushed to embrace prisoners freed under a US-brokered ceasefire agreement as they arrived by bus to the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Under the deal, Israel is set to release 250 Palestinians serving life sentences and long prison terms, as well as 1,700 Palestinians detained in Gaza since the war began, 22 Palestinian minors, and the bodies of 360 Hamas members.
Release of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails began on Monday after Hamas freed all 20 living Israeli hostages held in Gaza as part of the deal reached last week to end the war in the Palestinian enclave.
Several thousand people gathered inside and around the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza awaiting the arrival of freed prisoners, with some waving Palestinian flags and others holding pictures of their relatives.
Fighting back tears, one woman who asked to be identified as Um Ahmed said she said that despite her joy at the release, she still had "mixed feelings" about the day.
"I am happy for our sons who are being freed, but we are still in pain for all those who had been killed by the occupation, and all the destruction that happened to our Gaza," she said by voice note.
In Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Samer Halabeya, a doctor freed from jail, said the prisoners had only learned they would be released long after the agreement had been signed.
"We hope that everyone gets freed," he said as he stood next to his weeping mother.
Mohammad Al Khatib, who had spent 20 years in an Israeli prison for killing three Israelis, said he couldn't believe he would soon be united with his family in Bethlehem. He had last seen his two girls and two boys when they visited him 30 months ago, he said.
"We have always had hope, that's why we continued to be steadfast," Khatib said.
The first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement took effect on Friday under US President Donald Trump’s plan to end a two-year Israeli war on the enclave.
Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed more than 67,800 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, leaving the enclave largely uninhabitable.
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Source: TRT