Gaza ceasefire deal takes effect and fighting halts after delay

A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip took effect on Sunday after a nearly three-hour delay, pausing the 15-month-old war that has brought devastation and seismic political change to the Middle East.

Residents and a medical worker in Gaza said no new fighting or military strikes were heard since about half an hour before the ceasefire was finally implemented.

Israeli airstrikes and artillery attacks killed 13 Palestinians between 0630 GMT, when the ceasefire was meant to take effect, and 0915 GMT, when it actually did, Palestinian medics said.

Israel blamed Hamas for the delay after the Palestinian militant group failed to provide a names list of the first three hostages to be released under the deal.

Hamas attributed the delay to "technical" reasons, without specifying what those were.

A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the delay occurred because mediators had requested 48 hours of "calm" before the ceasefire's implementation. However, continued Israeli strikes up until the deadline had complicated the submission of the list.

Two hours after the deadline, Hamas said it had sent the list of names, which Israeli officials confirmed receiving. Hamas named the hostages it was to release on Sunday as Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari.

Israel did not immediately confirm the names.

The highly anticipated ceasefire deal could help usher in an end to the Gaza war, which began after Hamas, which controls the tiny coastal territory, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel's response has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, resulting in nearly 47,000 Palestinian deaths, as reported by Gaza-based health authorities.

The war also set off a confrontation throughout the Middle East between Israel and its arch-enemy Iran, which backs Hamas and other anti-Israeli and anti-American paramilitary groups across the region.

Israeli forces had started withdrawing from areas in Gaza's Rafah to the Philadelphi Route along the border between Egypt and Gaza, pro-Hamas media reported early on Sunday.

The three-stage ceasefire agreement followed months of on-off negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, and came just ahead of the January 20 inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

Its first stage will last six weeks, during which 33 of the remaining 98 hostages - women, children, men over 50, the ill and wounded - will be released in return for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

They include 737 male, female and teen-aged prisoners, some of whom are members of militant groups convicted of attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, as well as hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza in detention since the war broke out.

The first three are female hostages expected to be released through the Red Cross on Sunday. In return for each, 30 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are to be released.

Under the terms of the deal, Hamas will inform the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of the meeting point inside Gaza, while the ICRC is expected to head to the location to collect the hostages, an official involved in the process told Reuters.

But what will come next in Gaza remains unclear in the absence of a comprehensive agreement on the postwar future of the enclave, which will require billions of dollars and years of work to rebuild.

And although the stated aim of the ceasefire is to end the war entirely, it could easily unravel once again.

Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for almost two decades, has survived despite losing its top leadership and thousands of fighters.

Israel has vowed it will not allow Hamas to return to power and has cleared large stretches of ground inside Gaza, in a step widely seen as a move towards creating a buffer zone that will allow its troops to act freely against threats in the enclave.

In Israel, the return of the hostages may ease some of the public anger against Netanyahu and his right-wing government over the October 7 security failure.