A group of 24 hostages — including 13 Israelis and a number of Thais — were released from the Gaza Strip on Friday, as a breakthrough deal between Israel and Hamas to pause fighting took hold after weeks of secretive diplomacy.
Thirteen Israeli hostages were handed over to the Red Cross, a regional diplomat with knowledge of the situation told NBC News. An Israel Defense Forces source and a source in the Egyptian government also confirmed they were released and transferred to Egypt. From there, they were expected to be taken to an airbase in Israel for medical treatment, counseling and ultimately to be reunited with their relatives.
In exchange, Israel was set to release 39 Palestinians, comprising 24 women and 15 teenage males, who it has been holding in detention for a range of alleged offenses.
In addition to that deal, 10 Thai nationals and a Filipino citizen captured from Israel on Oct. 7 were also released by Hamas, Qatar’s foreign ministry said. The Red Cross said it had facilitated the transfer and was “relieved to confirm the safe release of 24 hostages.”
Thailand’s prime minister earlier said in a post on social media that 12 nationals from his country had been released. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
Meanwhile, a cease-fire planned for at least four days largely held, allowing hundreds of trucks carrying aid and some fuel into the densely populated enclave that has been besieged and bombarded for weeks since Hamas’ surprise terror attack on Oct. 7.
The deal offered some relief for the 2.3 million people living in the enclave with dwindling supplies, some of whom streamed out of shelters Friday morning to head home in defiance of Israeli military warnings.
It has also offered hope to the families of the roughly 240 hostages believed taken on Oct. 7, who have led a tireless pressure campaign to bring their loved ones home.
Brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, the deal is set to release at least 50 hostages in all. In return, Israel says it will free 150 Palestinian prisoners. No Americans were expected to be part of the first group, a senior Biden administration official said.
Prior to this, only four people had been freed from Gaza, leaving in two pairs; Israel also freed one of its soldiers while conducting ground operations in the strip. Two others, including another soldier, have been found dead.
The fate of the hostages has been a central source of grief and turmoil in Israel. The families have campaigned relentlessly to secure their release, including taking over a public square opposite the defense ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, and marching 40 miles from the city to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem.
“We’re just parents praying that our son comes out,” Rachel Goldberg, mother of American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, told NBC News.
Netanyahu has been adamant that his two goals — destroying Hamas and freeing all of the hostages — are being given equal weight.
“We are at war, and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals,” he said in a speech before the release.
Meanwhile, Israel has been facing increasing global pressure over the fate of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Israel has been conducting an intense bombardment and ground assault on the enclave, one that it says has been carefully targeted on Hamas but that has killed more than 14,500 people including some 5,000 children, according to the local health ministry.
On Friday, as the cease-fire appeared to be holding, hundreds of aid trucks entered the strip, and many Palestinians appeared to take the opportunity to travel back to their homes to assess the damage. This, despite leaflets dropped by Israel warning them not to reenter the north, the main battleground of the war.
“We are on our way to Khuza’a to see what happened to our home,” one woman, Suhaila Abu Al-Jal, told NBC News as she walked among crowds through the destroyed buildings in Khan Younis. Khuza’a is a neighborhood to the east of the city, near the border with Israel.
“We pray to God to give us patience,” she said. Because “we do not want this truce: We want it to last forever.”
The 150 Palestinians set to be freed by Israel are mostly from the West Bank and Jerusalem.
As Gaza descends further into a humanitarian disaster, the deal to pause the fighting was achieved after what one Biden administration official described as an “extremely excruciating five-week process.”
President Joe Biden was directly involved in the negotiations and received hourly updates on the progress, the administration official said. Among the early sticking points, they said, were Israel’s requirement that Hamas provide identifying information and “proof of life” for the hostages and Hamas’ demand that fuel enter Gaza.
A senior White House administration official and a senior Middle East official said that the release of two Americans — Judith Raanan and her teenage daughter, Natalie — was viewed as a “pilot” case that proved the effectiveness of the system that had been put into place to create a potential pipeline for hostages to be released.
Also, Netanyahu needed some convincing.
“Just a couple of days ago Biden came with the final deal saying a five day pause and Netanyahu said four days,” a senior Israeli government official told NBC News. “This deal was a Biden deal, not a Netanyahu deal.”
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.