Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday vowed Gaza would never again pose a threat to Israel, as a tense calm prevailed on the second day of a truce in the Palestinian territory.

Three Israeli hostages, all women, were reunited with their families after Hamas fighters handed them over on Sunday, followed by the overnight release of 90 Palestinian prisoners from an Israeli jail in the occupied West Bank.

Two buses carrying Palestinian prisoners released in the Gaza ceasefire deal had to inch through a thick crowd when they at last arrived in the West Bank at 2 am Monday.

After the doors opened, women hugged their relatives and cried tears of joy while throngs of people chanted, waved flags and climbed atop the vehicles. Others lit fireworks in the normally quiet suburb of Beitunia.

Bushra al-Tawil, a Palestinian journalist jailed in Israel in March 2024, was among the first batch of prisoners to be released in the truce.

Chaotic scenes enveloped the three hostages from Israel who were handed over to the Red Cross Sunday by masked Hamas militants wearing green headbands in a packed Gaza City square.

A dense crowd of Palestinians had gathered to watch the moment, the first release of hostages seized on October 7, 2023, under the new ceasefire that came into effect on Sunday.

Hamas fighters struggled to hold the crowds back from the convoy of Red Cross SUVs that had arrived at Saraya Square in the west of Gaza City to collect them.

The crowds in Tel Aviv's "Hostage Square" cheered and whooped with joy late Sunday at the news that the first three hostages freed under the Gaza ceasefire deal had returned to Israel.

There was elation among those who had waited for hours in the plaza in the centre of Israel's commercial hub opposite Israeli military headquarters.

The good news of the release of the three women was tempered by the knowledge that so many hostages still remained captives of Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, however.

Syrian security forces destroyed seized drugs Sunday including around 100 million pills of the amphetamine-like stimulant captagon -- whose production and trafficking flourished under ousted president Bashar al-Assad, an official said.

A 2022 AFP investigation found that Syria under Assad had become a narco state, with the $10-billion captagon industry dwarfing all other exports and funding both his regime and many of his enemies.

Columns of people hundreds strong were making their way home in northern Gaza on Sunday, flanked on both sides by countless buildings turned to rubble, as a ceasefire took effect in the Palestinian territory.

In places, they crossed an ashen landscape, heaped with pulverised concrete and studded with the skeletons of ruined buildings.

They walked towards the northern city of Jabalia in a haze of dust raised by the movement of hundreds of feet and vehicles over sandy soil on roads stripped of their paving.

Three women hostages held by militants in the Gaza Strip for more than 15 months are on Sunday to become the first freed under a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Here are their short profiles:

- Romi Gonen, 24 -

Romi Gonen, from northern Israel, was among dozens captured when Hamas fighters ambushed the Supernova rave festival and killed 364 people on October 7, 2023.

During the attack, from which she attempted to flee by car, Gonen phoned her mother Merav Leshem Gonen, who tried to comfort her above the din of explosions.

Emily Damari, 28, is a British-Israeli dual national who was one of the three women released on Sunday under a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

"After 471 days Emily is finally home," said her mother, Mandy Damari, who has campaigned tirelessly for her release since she was kidnapped by Hamas militants in October 2023.

Damari was the last British hostage being held in the Gaza Strip. Some of the other hostages however have links to the UK.

As Israel prepares to welcome home the first of 33 hostages freed under a ceasefire with Hamas, health workers warn of the psychological challenges they face after their 15 months in captivity.

Nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are also set to be released as part of the agreement that took effect on Sunday.

Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war, 94 remained in Gaza as the ceasefire began, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday after a long-awaited truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect, the United Nations said.

"First trucks of supplies started entering" minutes after the ceasefire took effect on Sunday morning, UN aid official Jonathan Whittall, interim chief of the UN's OCHA aid agency for the Palestinian territories, said on X.

"A massive effort has been underway over the past days from humanitarian partners to load and prepare to distribute a surge of aid across all of Gaza."