An army of Israeli medics, child protection experts and trauma specialists were bracing Friday to receive 13 women and children released from Gaza after weeks of Hamas captivity.

Nearly seven weeks after more than 240 hostages were snatched from southern Israel by Hamas militants, a first batch of 13 hostages were handed over to Red Cross officials in Gaza, before they were delivered to Israeli custody, officials said.

With children and pets in their arms and their belongings loaded onto donkey carts or car roofs, thousands of displaced Gazans headed home Friday as a four-day Israel-Hamas truce began.

The din of war was replaced by the horns of traffic jams and sirens of ambulances making their way through crowds emerging from hospitals and schools where they had taken refuge.

For nearly seven weeks, Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip had been relentless.

But on Friday morning, no more shots were heard in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Palestinian territory.

Hamas on Friday freed a first batch of hostages seized in the deadliest attack in Israel's history under a deal that saw a temporary truce take hold in war-ravaged Gaza.

Thirteen Israeli hostages captured during Palestinian militants' cross-border raids were back in Israeli territory where they would undergo medical checks before being reunited with their families, the army said.

They included four children and six elderly women, an official Israeli list showed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to bring all the hostages home.

Thousands of miles from the Middle East, in a stadium in Santiago, Chile, the nation of Palestine exists, if only for the 90 minutes of a soccer match.

Chileans and Palestinians created that alternate reality again on Thursday when Club Deportivo Palestino, which traces its origins to Palestinian immigrants who came to the South American nation in the early 1900s, held a tribute for the Gazan victims of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Rights groups are preparing for the COP28 climate talks in the United Arab Emirates with trepidation, fearing surveillance and detention under the oil-rich monarchy's strict criminal justice system.

Highly attuned to international scrutiny, the UAE, where unauthorised protests are illegal, has said it would permit demonstrations in designated areas of the COP28 site, a far-flung development in the Dubai suburbs surrounded mostly by desert.

A gas-guzzling fossil fuel exporter trying to spearhead more ambitious climate action, the United Arab Emirates remains heavily dependent on hydrocarbons for its prosperity.

- The carbon footprint -

The UAE may be a small country of only nine million inhabitants but it emitted 237 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2021, according to the Global Carbon Atlas -- without including methane and other greenhouse gas emissions.

The United Kingdom, for comparison, emitted 348 million that year for a population of 67 million people.

"I am here to take you home. You are in a safe place" -- Israeli soldiers are being carefully prepared to receive potentially deeply traumatised women and child hostages seized by Palestinian militants.

From a manual for trauma care to medical support, even the first words the soldiers escorting them home will say have been carefully scripted, with experts warning many could face a long road to recovery.

Sahar Awwad is seated between her two nephews. Together, they are among the few survivors of an extended Gaza family of which at least 80 members have been killed in nearly seven weeks of Israeli bombardment.

The entire family had fled first to a hospital in Khan Yunis, then to a school, which was initially transformed into a camp for the displaced then a clinic, in Rafah near the border with Egypt, the southernmost point of the besieged enclave.

Only 35 kilometres (20 miles) separated them from their former home in Gaza City, but the journey took them a week.

Tunisian film star Hend Sabri has resigned as World Food Programme goodwill ambassador in protest at what she called the use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.

Sabri, a leading figure in Arab cinema, said that she had decided with "a heavy heart and deep sadness" to step down after 13 years with the United Nations agency.

In a statement published on social media platform X late Wednesday, the 44-year-old said that she had asked the WFP leadership to push for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the besieged Palestinian territory.

A four-day truce in the Israel-Hamas war began on Friday, with hostages set to be released in exchange for prisoners in the first major reprieve during seven weeks of a war that have claimed thousands of lives.

The two sides had agreed to silence guns and stop bombings from 7:00 am (0500 GMT) in a conflict that erupted after Hamas's murderous raids into Israel on October 7.

As part of the agreement, 13 women and children held hostage in Gaza are due to be freed at 4:00 pm, followed by a number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, according to Qatari mediators.