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Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned to a devastated Gaza City today as Hamas said it would start releasing Israeli hostages on Monday morning local time as part of the first phase of United States President Donald Trump’s peace plan.

Trump’s Middle East envoy promised Israeli hostage families their loved ones would be returned to them, and the region’s top US general visited Gaza one day after the guns fell silent.

“Your courage has moved the world,” Steve Witkoff told the families and huge crowd in Tel Aviv, Israel. “To the hostages themselves: you are coming home,” he declared, as Israelis chanted “Thank you Trump”.

Shortly afterwards, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said: “the prisoner exchange is set to begin on Monday morning as agreed”.

Israel and Hamas are to release hostages and prisoners, two years after the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023, attack triggered a counter-offensive that killed more than 67,000 Palestinians.

But mediators still have to secure a longer-term political solution that aims to see Hamas hand in its weapons and step aside from governing Gaza.

In an interview with AFP in Qatar, Badran, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, warned: “The second phase of the Trump plan, as it is clear from the points themselves, contains many complexities and difficulties”.

Hamas, he said, would not attend the formal signing of the Gaza peace deal in Egypt, where international leaders are due to gather on Monday local time to discuss implementing the first phase of the ceasefire.

Hamas is resisting calls to disarm. An official from the group, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that it was “out of the question”.

Hamas ally Iran also warned it did not trust Israel to respect the ceasefire.

“There is absolutely no trust in the Zionist regime,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.

Multinational force

Under the Trump plan, as Israel conducts a phased withdrawal from Gaza’s cities, it will be replaced by a multi-national force from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, co-ordinated by a US-led command centre in Israel.

US Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper, Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner visited Gaza.

Witkoff, Kushner, and Trump’s daughter Ivanka then went on to Tel Aviv to attend a gathering with the families of the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is one of about 20 hostages believed to still be alive, said: “We will continue to shout and fight until everyone is home”.

“We finally feel hope, but we cannot and will not stop now,” added Zairo Shachar Mohr Munder, whose uncle Abraham was abducted during the Hamas attack and his body recovered in August.

Hamas has until noon on Monday local time to hand over 47 remaining Israeli hostages – living and dead – from the 251 abducted two years ago. The remains of one more hostage, held in Gaza since 2014, are also expected to be returned.

In exchange, Israel will release 250 prisoners, including some serving life sentences for deadly anti-Israeli attacks, and 1700 Gazans detained by the military since the war broke out.

The Israeli prison service said it had moved the 250 national security detainees to two prisons ahead of the handover.

‘Stood and cried’

According to Gaza’s civil defence agency, a rescue service operating under Hamas authority, more than 500,000 Palestinians had returned to Gaza City by today.

“We walked for hours, and every step was filled with fear and anxiety for my home,” Raja Salmi, 52, told AFP.

When she reached the Al-Rimal neighbourhood, she found her house utterly destroyed.

“I stood before it and cried. All those memories are now just dust,” she said.

Drone footage shot by AFP showed whole city blocks reduced to a twisted mess of concrete and steel reinforcing wire.

The walls and windows of five-storey apartment blocks had been torn off and now choke the roadsides as disconsolate residents poke through the rubble.

The United Nations humanitarian office says Israel has allowed agencies to start transporting 170,000 tonnes of aid into Gaza if the ceasefire holds.

‘Ghost town’

Men, women and children navigated streets filled with rubble, searching for homes amid collapsed concrete slabs, destroyed vehicles and debris.

Sami Musa, 28, returned alone to check on his family’s house.

“Thank God ... I found that our home is still standing,” Musa told AFP.

“It felt like a ghost town, not Gaza,” Musa said. “The smell of death still lingers in the air.”

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 67,682 people, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.

The data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but indicates that more than half of the dead are women and children.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

- Agence France-Presse