Jerusalem (CNN) — The first groups of Israelis and Palestinians have been released under a truce brokered between Israel and Hamas that brought a temporary halt to fighting in Gaza after weeks of conflict, officials said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed 13 Israeli hostages had returned to Israel on Friday, where they have undergone initial medical assessments.

And Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, which helped broker the agreement, confirmed that the Palestinian prisoners released as part of the deal were on the way to the West Bank.

The Red Cross, which transported the detainees on Friday from Gaza to the Rafah border with Egypt, said 24 hostages had been freed.

Ten Thai citizens and one Filipino citizen have also been freed under a separate agreement.

Among the Israelis freed are 5-year-old Emilia Aloni and Adina Moshe, who was seen being driven away on a motorbike after being abducted from her kibbutz during the October 7 Hamas attacks.

“They’re now en route to hospitals where they will be reunited with their families – or rather, should I say, what’s left of their families,” Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy told CNN. “Many of them, of course, their families were murdered on October 7.”

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said that the 11 freed foreign nationals were returned to Israel alongside the Israeli hostages released on Friday night. “They all underwent an initial medical assessment at the Kerem Shalom crossing, and their lives are not at risk,” he said in a briefing.

Levy said the initial release still left 215 hostages inside Gaza. “None of us here are free until all of them are free. We are committed to that pledge: There will be no one left behind,” he said.

Israel also released 39 Palestinian prisoners in return on Friday. Buses reported to be carrying some of the released Palestinian women and teenagers were seen leaving Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.

The Red Cross later confirmed that the group leaving Ofer prison had arrived in Ramallah.

The Israeli intelligence service Mossad and the IDF have received the second list of Israeli hostages due to be released on Saturday as part of the framework agreed on with Hamas, the office of Israel’s Prime Minister said in a written statement on Friday.

Security officials are reviewing the list of names, the statement said.

Israel’s Hostage Coordinator Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch has given the information to the families of the hostages, the statement added.

The list will not be released to the public until the hostages are safely in Israeli hands.

A major breakthrough

The hostages and Palestinians released Friday were the first to be freed through a deal between the two sides that was finalized after weeks of tense negotiations and took several agonizing days to come into effect.

The agreement, accompanied by a four-day truce between Hamas and Israel, represents a first major diplomatic breakthrough in the conflict.

The released hostages entered Egypt through the Rafah crossing before returning to Israeli soil, where they were taken to local hospitals.

Well-wishers gathered outside the Schneider Children’s Medical Center near Tel Aviv cheered and clapped as helicopters carrying now-freed hostages arrived on Friday after dark. Eight freed hostages from three families are receiving care at the center, according to hospital staff.

One nurse from a neighboring hospital who came to witness the moment told CNN it was like a “drop of joy in a sea of sadness.”

“I needed to see this moment with my own eyes,” the nurse, who asked to be identified by her first name, Elena, said.

The concurrent halt in fighting began at 7 a.m. local time (12 a.m. ET) Friday, and is believed to be holding – the first sustained break in hostilities after nearly seven weeks of conflict.

It allowed relief to flow into the besieged Gaza Strip, marking some respite in a humanitarian crisis that has worsened by the day. The United Nations said Friday that 137 trucks of humanitarian goods were offloaded in Gaza on day one of the pause in fighting, marking the largest aid convoy that has moved into the strip since October 7.

“During the humanitarian pause that has been in place since this morning, the UN was able to scale up the delivery of humanitarian assistance into and across Gaza,” a statement from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

On Friday, 129,000 liters of fuel and four trucks of gas were also delivered to Gaza, OCHA said.

OCHA added that “21 critical patients were evacuated in a large-scale medical operation from the north of Gaza.” It is not clear where those patients were taken.

While Friday saw the first batch of Israeli hostages released, more – totalling 50 women and children – are expected to be exchanged over the course of the truce.

Speaking to reporters Friday, President Joe Biden called the release of hostages a positive start and sounded an optimistic note on the potential release of Americans in the coming days.

Biden said he expected soon to get the names of the hostages who will be released on Saturday, saying he was “hopeful it’s as we anticipate.” He said he did not know when the three Americans who fall into the category of women or children, including now-four-year-old Abigail Edan, would be released, but confirmed he still does “expect it to occur.”

“My hope and expectation is it’ll be soon,” he said of the possibility of the three Americans being released.

Pressure on the Israeli government had been mounting for weeks from the families of the hostages, who have demanded answers and action from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

International calls for more humanitarian support for the people of Gaza had also been growing, and the truce is expected to give respite to those in the enclave who have endured weeks of attacks. The number of people killed since October 7 now stands at 14,854, according to information from Hamas authorities in the Strip.

Hundreds of people gathered outside Tel Aviv’s Museum of Art – in an area that has gained the name “Hostages Square” among locals – ahead of the announcement, waiting anxiously for confirmation of the hostages’ safe transfer.

Tamar Shamir said she had been visiting the square for weeks to show support for the hostages and their families. While the confirmation of the transfer came as a relief, she said more needed to be done to return all hostages taken by Hamas.

“We are not happy. We cannot be happy until everyone comes back home,” Shamir told CNN.

Residents of Gaza meanwhile began moving across parts of the Strip after Friday’s truce began, though some displaced Palestinians trying to return to homes in northern Gaza were allegedly blocked by Israeli forces, a journalist told CNN.

The IDF warned residents against attempting to travel from the south to the north, where combat between Hamas and Israel has been concentrated.

Social media videos showed people running away amid the sound of gunfire, presumed to be Israeli, on Salah Al-Din street. A journalist told CNN that Israeli tanks were seen and gunfire could be heard on Salah Al-Din street.

CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on whether people attempting to enter north were fired on.

Israel declared war on Hamas following the militant group’s bloody October 7 terror attack on its territory, in which more than 1,200 people were killed – the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

Militants were holding more than 200 people captive inside Gaza from mass abductions that day, according to figures from the Israeli military.

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It’s America’s next Covid-19 culture war.

Growing numbers of businesses, hospitality industries, and even sports teams are considering requiring proof of vaccination for customers, once the world begins to open up. For both patrons and staff, such a system might offer peace of mind — and could stop a cruise voyage around the Caribbean, for example, from turning into a floating super spreader.

Countries where Covid-19 rates are low might soon start demanding inoculation information before they let tourists in. It’s not that different from parents showing proof of vaccination typically required to enroll kids in American schools, or those little yellow vaccine cards already required to travel in countries threatened by yellow fever, tuberculosis or other scourges. Yet the idea of “vaccine passports” has become the latest object of right-wing politicians’ outrage.

Everyone’s favorite conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, a member of Congress from Georgia, branded vaccine passports as “Biden’s mark of the beast” and “fascism or communism or whatever you want to call it.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential Republican 2024 presidential candidate, has also seized on the idea as an issue that will play to the GOP base. “It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society,” DeSantis said.

For the record, President Joe Biden is not actually planning to mandate vaccine passports or to set up a central vaccines database that raises the specter of Big Brother surveillance trampling American individualism. The White House says it is trying to work with companies to set standards for vaccine passports and to ensure people’s privacy is protected.

Nevertheless, it is an ethical minefield. Should businesses bar people who are not vaccinated? Can employers make vaccines a condition for accepting a new job? Certainly vaccines should be available to anyone who wants one before such filtering systems are introduced. But equally, is it fair for an American who endangers others by refusing vaccination to get the same benefits as others? Rent-a-quote politicians stirring fear and anger about the issue are not doing much to help.

New rules

Team USA athletes are now permitted to hold up a fist, kneel, and wear garments promoting racial and social justice at competitions, according to new rules published Tuesday by the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee. Those who choose to do so will be following in a well-trod path — Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200 meters, made history at the 1968 Olympic Games with the black power salute in support of African Americans’ civil rights.

Postcard from London

My hands are chapped from a day wiping down patients’ chairs with disinfectant as a volunteer at a local Covid-19 vaccination center — they didn’t have gloves in my size. But raw knuckles seem like a small price to pay for my tiny role in getting the United Kingdom vaccinated.

The UK’s vaccination rollout has so far been a roaring success, with 50 doses of vaccine administered per 100 people, according to data tracked by CNN. It’s the largest country by far to have such a high vaccination rate. But the shots came too late to prevent a grimmer statistical superlative: The UK also has one of the highest per capita Covid-19 death rates on Earth.

The US with its turbo-charged inoculation program is in a similar position: Awful death tolls and impressive vaccination figures. Both countries failed to contain the coronavirus when it first appeared — but after a lethal year, Covid-19 now appears to be a problem they can solve with massive spending on vaccines. In this crisis, vaccines are a magic bullet for sale, and the US and UK have money. But both countries may have lost out on a teachable moment; they won’t be able to buy their way out of the world’s other enduring crises.

Technology is moving slowly on coming up with a similar solution for climate change. And there are no magic bullets at any price for sexism or racism or poverty, as the UK faces up to its problem of violence against women in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard; systemic racism intertwined with its colonial history; and the shocking fact that in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, many children would go hungry without free meals at school.

Those problems require permanent and profound changes in human behavior on a massive scale — the kind of changes that we initially needed to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but now thanks to vaccines, are preparing to forget. — CNN’s Richard Greene writes from London

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