Israel expects hostages to be freed from Gaza 'in a few hours' as ceasefire holds

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CAIRO (AP) — Israel said Sunday that it expected all of the living hostages held in the Gaza Strip to be released Monday in its breakthrough ceasefire deal with Hamas, as Palestinians awaited the release of hundreds of prisoners held in Israel and a surge of aid into the famine-stricken territory.

“In a few hours, we will all be reunited,” Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, said in a statement.

U.S. President Donald Trump planned to leave later in the day to visit Israel and Egypt to celebrate the ceasefire announced last week that offered hope for an end to the two-year war.

“We are expecting all 20 of our living hostages to be released together at one time to the Red Cross and transported among six to eight vehicles,” Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian said, noting that Israel did not expect militants to stage the exchanges in the same public manner as previous rounds.

Bedrosian said the hostages will be driven to a military base to reunite with their families or, if needed, immediately to a hospital.

After the hostages are freed, Israel was ready to release about 2,000 Palestinian detainees and receive the 28 hostages believed to be dead. The military planned a ceremony on their behalf in Gaza, Bedrosian said.

An international task force will start working to locate deceased hostages who are not returned within 72 hours, said Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for the Hostages and the Missing. Officials have said the search for the bodies of hostages, some of which may be under rubble, could take time.

Timing has not been announced for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel who are to be freed. They include 250 people serving life sentences in addition to 1,700 seized from Gaza during the war and held without charge.

Dr. Mounir al-Boursh, head of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said he hoped the bodies of medical personnel who died in Israeli detention centers will be among those handed over.

On Gaza's borders, preparations were underway to ramp up aid entering the war-battered territory. The Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid in Gaza said the amount of aid entering was expected to increase Sunday to around 600 trucks per day, as stipulated in the agreement.

“Much of Gaza is a wasteland," U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told The Associated Press. He said the U.N. has a plan for the next two months to restore basic medical and other services, bring in thousands of tons of food and fuel and remove rubble.

Egypt said it was sending 400 aid trucks into Gaza on Sunday. AP footage showed dozens of trucks crossing the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing. The Egyptian Red Crescent said the vehicles carried medical supplies, tents, blankets, food and fuel. The trucks will head to the inspection area in the Kerem Shalom crossing for screening by Israeli troops.

The United Nations has said it has about 170,000 metric tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid ready to enter once Israel gives the green light. Abeer Etifa, a World Food Program spokesperson, said workers were clearing and repairing roads inside Gaza to make way for deliveries.

The fate of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli- and U.S.-backed contractor that replaced the U.N. aid operation in May as the primary food supplier in Gaza, remained unclear.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which has the equivalent of 6,000 trucks of aid waiting in Egypt and Jordan, also had no clarity on its role in the relief effort. A spokesperson for the agency known as UNRWA, Jonathan Fowler, said the organization has enough food in its warehouses for Gaza's entire population for three months.

Trump, who pushed to clinch the ceasefire deal, was expected to arrive Monday morning in Israel. He will meet with families of the hostages and speak at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, according to a schedule released by the White House.

Trump will continue to Egypt, where the office of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has said he will co-chair a “peace summit” Monday with regional and international leaders.

While both Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the halt to the fighting and plans to release the hostages and prisoners, the longer-term fate of the ceasefire remains murky. Key questions about governance of Gaza and the post-war fate of Hamas, including its proposed disarmament, have yet to be resolved.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on X that he had instructed the military to prepare to begin destroying the network of tunnels built by Hamas under Gaza “through the international mechanism that will be established under the leadership and supervision of the U.S.” once the hostages are released.

How that will be achieved with Israeli forces having pulled back within Gaza was not immediately clear.

Palestinians continued to move back to areas vacated by Israeli forces. Many were returning to homes reduced to rubble.

Mohamed Samy said he immediately went back on foot to see if his home in Jabaliya was still standing.

“It was flattened, just like everything else in Jabaliya,” Samy said. It was an empty plot of land. “It was like the building never even existed in that place. I questioned my sanity.”

Satellite photos taken Saturday and analyzed by the AP showed a line of vehicles traveling north to Gaza City along the strip’s coastline.

Armed police in Gaza City and southern Gaza patrolled the streets and secured aid trucks driving through areas where the Israeli military had withdrawn, residents said. The police force is part of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

The ministry said in a statement Sunday that it would allow members of armed gangs not involved in the killing of Palestinians to turn themselves in as early as Monday, “repent and be pardoned.”

The pause in fighting allowed first responders to search previously inaccessible areas for bodies under rubble. Health officials said 233 had been recovered and brought to hospitals since Friday, when the truce went into effect. Some were brought in as only bones.

Yasser el-Bureis, at the morgue in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said he and his relatives had finally retrieved the remains of two cousins who were killed as they tried to flee their homes.

“For five months, we didn’t manage to recover the bodies,” he said.

The war began when Hamas-led militants launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

In Israel’s ensuing offensive, more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants but says around half the deaths were women and children. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and the U.N. and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.

The war has destroyed large swaths of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its 2 million residents. It has also triggered other conflicts in the region, sparked worldwide protests and led to allegations of genocide that Israel denies.

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Lidman reported from Tel Aviv. Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Cairo, Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, Abby Sewell in Beirut and Sam Metz in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war