8:09 pm ET, November 23, 2023
Who is expected to be released tomorrow and how will the transfer be? Here’s the latest
From CNN staff
Ariel Shalit/AP
First of all Freeing Hamas hostages Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majid al-Ansari said the release of 13 women and children was scheduled for Friday afternoon local time in Gaza.
Al-Ansari was unable to provide details on the identity of the hostages, nor the route they might take for security reasons. However, many of the first 50 hostages are expected to get out via Egypt.
The families of those who have not been released and the families of the hostages have been notified, the Israeli government said. Al-Ansari also said that hostages belonging to the same family would be released together in the first group.
Meanwhile, an Israeli official tells CNN that a total of 39 Palestinian prisoners will be released on Friday as part of the deal.
The prisoners will be taken from Daman and Megiddo, two prisons southeast of Haifa, and will be taken to Ofer prison, south of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, for final trials by the Red Cross.
The released prisoners are expected to include both girls and boys up to the age of 18.
The timing of the release was unclear, but the Israeli official said the prisoners would not be released until the hostages from Gaza were back in Israeli hands.
Here’s what you need to know this Thursday:
Israel Defense Forces said it had “intercepted several missiles” and later confirmed it was responding to the militant group’s attacks by using helicopters and warplanes to hit Hezbollah’s infrastructure and rocket launchers in Lebanon.
A medical aid group says 80 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Egypt. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says it received 80 trucks that entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing on Thursday. PRCS said the trucks brought food, water, medical equipment, medicine and public relief equipment to Gaza.
A large convoy of aid trucks line up at the Rafah border crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border – ready for when fighting between Israel and Hamas begins. The United Nations expects aid trucks to move into the area “immediately” after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire begins, an official told CNN on Thursday.