Another 13 of the hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip they are to be released todayon the third day of the ceasefire, Israeli news website Ynet reported citing Israeli officials.

Hamas has presented Israel with a list of 13 hostages to be released today, including some American citizens, Ynet reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said early this morning that it had received a list of the names of the hostages to be released today, although it did not specify the number.

Ynet reported that family members will not be separated this time, as happened during the second round of releases.

After freeing a first group of hostages on Friday, Hamas is still holding around 200 hostages.

After a thriller that lasted several hours, yesterday Hamas released 17 hostages. Israel in return released 39 Palestinian prisoners.

The truce, agreed under the auspices of Qatar, offered another day of respite for residents of the besieged Gaza Strip after seven weeks of war, which began on October 7 following an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel that killed around 1,200. people. Israeli shelling has stopped since Friday morning, as has rocket fire from Hamas.

The Israeli government announced last night that it had a list of hostages expected to be released today, but had not disclosed their identities, their numbers, or when they were expected to be handed over to the Red Cross.

Yesterday’s releases were delayed for several hours as Hamas accused Israel of not respecting the deal, but the process eventually went ahead. Israeli army spokesman Doron Spielman spoke of a “tactic” of Hamas “to delay” in the context of “psychological warfare”.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian movement, released video showing the 13 Israeli hostages and the four Thais getting into ICRC vehicles shortly before midnight. A young woman with a bandaged ankle who walked on crutches was lying on a stretcher in one of the vehicles.

The convoy crossed into Egypt via the Rafah crossing in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and the hostages were then taken to Israel.

Among the hostages freed yesterday was Maya Regev, 21, who was kidnapped along with her 18-year-old brother as they tried to leave the Tribe of Nova music festival which was attacked by Hamas. Video posted on social media showed the young woman and her brother tied to the back of a pickup truck.

“I am very happy that Maya is coming back to us. However, my heart is in pieces because my son Itai is still a prisoner of Hamas in Gaza,” their mother Mirit said in a statement issued by the Hostage Families Forum.

An Israeli-Irish 9-year-old, Emily, is also among the group of 17 hostages freed, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar announced, calling it “a day of immense joy and relief”.

“There are no words”

“There are no words to describe our feelings after 50 difficult and complicated days,” said Thomas Hunt, Emily’s father. “We are excited to find Emily again, but at the same time we are thinking (…) of all the hostages who have not yet returned home.”

Four German Israelis are also among those freed, German Foreign Minister Analena Burbock said, expressing her “relief”. Four other German Israelis were released on Friday.

The 17 hostages “underwent medical examinations,” the Israeli military said. One of them remained in the hospital and the rest returned to their families, he clarified.

In Tel Aviv, tens of thousands of people gathered last night in Homer Square. “Get them out of hell,” read one banner.

Celebrations on the West Bank

Late in the evening Israel announced that it had released a second group of 39 Palestinian prisoners, all of them women and minors.

In the occupied West Bank convoys of cars, which had flags of various Palestinian movements on them, took to the streets accompanying a Red Cross bus carrying the prisoners.

In East Jerusalem the celebrations were more discreet. Several armed members of Israel’s security forces were lined up outside the home of 39-year-old Israa Jaabis, the most high-profile prisoner released yesterday.

Her photograph inside an Israeli court, in which she is seen raising her atrophied fingers, her face partially burned, has become a symbol of the plight of Palestinian prisoners.

“I am ashamed to say that I am happy at a time when all of Palestine is wounded,” she told reporters from the living room of her family home, flanked by her 13-year-old son Motassem. “They must release everyone,” he stressed.

Jaabis was sentenced to 11 years in prison because in 2015 she detonated a gas canister in her car at an Israeli checkpoint, injuring a police officer.

Almost 250 trucks

As part of the agreement between Hamas and Israel, a four-day truce has been declared, during which 50 hostages of the Palestinian movement and 150 Palestinian prisoners will be released.

That pause, which may be extended, allowed humanitarian aid and fuel to enter the Gaza Strip, which Israel had imposed a total blockade on since October 7. Until now, trucks carrying aid entered the Palestinian enclave through the dropper and after approval by the Israeli authorities.

Yesterday, 248 trucks managed to enter Gaza, of which 61 were carrying water, food and medical supplies to the northern part of the enclave, according to the UN.

The Israeli military considers the northern part of the Gaza Strip a battle zone and has asked residents to leave, while preventing anyone trying to return.

Despite these warnings thousands of people took advantage of the lull in the fighting to try to return to the north, to their homes. And, according to the Hamas Health Ministry, seven of them were wounded by Israeli fire yesterday.

“Tremendous pressure”

Since the start of the war, 14,854 people have been killed in Gaza, including 6,150 children, according to the Hamas government.

The head of the Israeli army, General Herji Halevi, warned that the war is not over. “We will resume attacks on Gaza as soon as the truce ends (…) to dismember Hamas and exert enormous pressure to return as soon as possible as many hostages as possible, down to the last one,” he stressed.

Hospitals in the southern part of the Gaza Strip were yesterday still receiving many wounded people who were evacuated from the north. But according to Hamas Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kintreh, hospitals “no longer have the capacity or the equipment” to deal with this influx.

More than half the homes in the enclave have been destroyed or damaged, according to the UN, and 1.7 million people out of Gaza’s total 2.4 million residents have been displaced.