Israel and Hamas to start four-day truce on Friday -Qatar mediators
By Andrew Mills and Bassam Masoud
DOHA/GAZA (Reuters) -Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas will start a four-day truce on Friday morning with a first group of 13 Israeli women and child hostages released later that day, mediators in Qatar said.
World powers gave the news a cautious welcome. But fighting raged on, with local officials saying a hospital in Gaza City was among the targets bombed as the hours counted down to the start of the first break in a brutal, near seven-week-old war. Both sides also signalled the pause would be temporary before fighting resumes.
The truce would begin at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and involve a comprehensive ceasefire in north and south Gaza, Qatar's foreign ministry said.
Additional aid would start flowing into Gaza and the first hostages including elderly women would be freed at 4 p.m. (1400 GMT), with the total number rising to 50 over the four days, ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said in the Qatari capital Doha.
Palestinians were expected to be released from Israeli jail, he told reporters. «We all hope that this truce will lead to a chance to start a wider work to achieve a permanent truce.»
U.S. President Joe Biden, vacationing in the Massachusetts island of Nantucket for the Thanksgiving holiday, said he was keeping his «fingers crossed» that a 3-year-old American girl would be among those released first.
A U.S. State Department official called the truce a «hopeful moment» but said work would continue to free all the hostages.
Hamas — which had been expected to declare a truce with Israel a day earlier on Thursday only for negotiations to drag on — confirmed on its Telegram channel that all hostilities from its forces would cease.
But Abu Ubaida, spokesman
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