First Israeli hostages released under Gaza cease-fire

The first three Israeli hostages were released Sunday under a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip, beginning a drawn-out process that halted more than a year of war and will see 33 captives freed over the next six weeks in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

- Jared Malsin & Anat Peled

The cease-fire in Israel's war with Hamas went into force earlier in the day, clearing the way for the women's release.

The fragile truce pauses a 15-month war that has been among the deadliest in modern Middle East history, killing 46,000 Palestinians and reducing much of the strip to ruins following Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that killed about 1,200 people and seized about 250 hostages.

If it holds, the cease-fire could also ease tensions in the region after more than a year of a conflict that drew in the U.S., Iran and Tehran's allied militias across the Middle East, including the first direct exchanges of fire between Israel and Iran and an Israeli offensive against Lebanon's Hezbollah movement last year.

In a chaotic handover, Hamas drove the three women to a public square in Gaza where throngs of people surrounded the vehicles. Hamas gunmen then pushed back crowds of young men as the hostages were handed to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which drove them to the Israeli military.

As Israeli television broadcast the first images of the women, cheers erupted across a plaza in central Tel Aviv dubbed Hostage Square, where hundreds of Israelis gathered and watched the release.

"I want to cry, cry, cry with all my heart. I can't imagine how their mothers feel right now," said Rachel Rotem, 80, who joined hundreds of Israelis in Hostage Square. "I had to be here when they were released," she said.

The three women are Romi Gonen, a 24-year-old waitress who was taken from the Nova music festival in southern Israel; Doron Steinbrecher, 31, an Israeli-Romanian citizen and veterinary nurse who was kidnapped from her home in kibbutz Kfar Aza; and Emily Tehila Damari, 28, a British-Israeli citizen who was taken from her home in Kfar Aza.