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.

Many traumatised Israelis have compared the bloody Hamas onslaught of October 7 to the horrors of the Holocaust, but the head of the national memorial to the genocide disagrees.

Dani Dayan, chairman of Jerusalem's Yad Vashem memorial centre, stressed that the attack, although appalling, was fundamentally different from Nazi Germany's mass murder of six million Jews.

"I do not accept the simplistic comparison with the Holocaust even if there are similarities in the genocidal intentions, sadism and barbarism of Hamas," Dayan told AFP.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah group on Thursday intensified its attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon where Israeli bombardments killed seven of its fighters, including members of an elite unit.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, the border between Lebanon and Israel has witnessed escalating exchanges of fire, primarily involving Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, along with Palestinian groups.

The clashes have raised fears of a broader conflagration.

A seemingly endless row of white trucks lines the road through the desert in northern Egypt, their drivers desperate for the go-ahead to move badly needed aid into besieged Gaza.

After tedious days marked by idle chitchat and dreary diets of beans and instant coffee, the men, all Egyptians, took some comfort in news that more fuel and other essentials may soon be allowed in as part of a four-day truce that could begin as soon as Friday.

The bodies of dozens of unidentified people were buried on Wednesday in a mass grave at a cemetery in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Wrapped in blue tarpaulin, the bodies were lowered on stretchers, some of them stained with blood, into a sandy pit that was gradually enlarged by a digger. Some were the size of children.

"As these martyrs had no one to say goodbye to, we dug a mass grave to bury them. They are unknown martyrs," Bassem Dababesh of the emergency committee at the religious affairs ministry told AFP.

The Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen warned allies of Israel Wednesday that their shipping in the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea is a "legitimate target".

The warning comes after the Huthis on Sunday seized an Israel-linked cargo vessel, opening a new dimension in the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

Helicopter-borne troops seized the Galaxy Leader and its 25 international crew days after the Huthis threatened to target Israeli shipping because of the war.

By helping broker an Israel-Hamas deal to free hostages, US President Joe Biden has achieved a long-sought win in a war that has cost him politically.

But the diplomatic victory will likely be fleeting, with Israel uninterested -- and Biden for now not pressing -- for a full ceasefire in a war that has killed thousands of Israelis and Palestinians and prompted risks of a wider conflict.

Declaring her preference for "something light and comfortable", an Israeli mother-of-four browsed through a collection of pistols in a Jerusalem gun store, which appeared to be experiencing a business boom in wartime.

Applications for gun permits have soared across Israel since October 7, when Hamas gunmen stormed through the highly militarised border with the Gaza Strip, with many civilians having to defend themselves while waiting for the army to respond.

International oil prices fell Wednesday after a key ministerial meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies was pushed back from Sunday to November 30.

The Vienna-based organisation announced the postponement of the OPEC+ alliance gathering in a brief statement, without providing any explanation.

The 13 OPEC members headed by Saudi Arabia and ten partners led by Russia are due to decide on their output policy amid slumping crude prices and recent rumours of discord among alliance members.

Two Hebrew copies of Eric Hill's book "Where's Spot?" stand on tiny children's chairs at Israel's newly opened National Library, alongside pictures of three-year-old Israeli twins taken hostage by Hamas.

An installation featuring one chair for each of the hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been installed in the central book well in the library's modernist new home, seven years in the building.