Egypt confirms that the truce in the Gaza Strip will begin on Friday at 7.00 local time

The director of the State Information Service, Diaa Rashwan, who acts as spokesman for the Egyptian government, confirmed today that the four-day truce agreed by Israel and the Islamist group Hamas will begin this Friday at 7.00 local time (5.00 GMT). 

In a statement, he added that Egypt - mediator of the pact along with Qatar and the United States - has also received the "lists of detainees and prisoners from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, whose release is scheduled for the first day of the ceasefire", without giving further details. 

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari announced earlier that 13 civilian women and children held by Hamas in Gaza will be released on Friday, but also did not give the number of prisoners in Israeli jails also scheduled for release at around 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT). 

During these four days, a total of 50 hostages will be released from Gaza, while 150 Palestinian prisoners, all of them women and children, are expected to be released. 

In this regard, the Egyptian official urged both sides to "implement the cessation of hostilities as planned and agreed". 

After the parties agreed to the terms of the deal early Wednesday morning, the ceasefire for the hostage release was expected to take effect today, but was delayed due to the need to finalise details. 

Under the agreement, Hamas will release between 10 and 13 hostages each day during the four days of the ceasefire, until it reaches 50, at which point Israel will release the Palestinians. 

If all goes well, the truce can be extended to a maximum of ten days, allowing Hamas to release 150 of the 240 or so hostages it is holding captive, and Israel to release up to 300 Palestinians. 

Of the more than 240 people Hamas kidnapped during its brutal attack on Israeli soil on 7 October, four women have already been released on "humanitarian grounds", according to the group - an American mother and daughter, and two elderly Israeli women; one soldier was rescued by the army; and the bodies of two abductees, a 19-year-old soldier and a 65-year-old woman, have been found inside the Strip.