AFP news agency quotes an Israeli security source as saying that 13 Israeli hostages have been handed over to Israeli forces.

We will bring you more as soon as we have it.

TV footage streamed from the Egypt-Gaza border has just shown a number of Red Cross vehicles crossing the border into Egypt.

Imogen Foulkes
Reporting from Geneva

The Red Cross has confirmed an operation to "re-unite hostages and detainees with their families" has begun.

The organisation has not yet confirmed how many hostages it has retrieved, but describes the work as a "multi-day" operation which will include the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

We expect a further statement from the ICRC, with more details of hostage numbers, later today.

More now on the 12 Thai hostages who were released from Hamas captivity in Gaza a short time ago.

Thai media reported that the hostages had crossed into Israel through the Rafah crossing and were being taken to the Shamir Medical Centre (Assaf Harofeh) south of Tel Aviv in Jerusalem.

There they'll receive medical care and reportedly stay for 48 hours.

They were freed under a separate agreement mediated by Qatar and Egypt with Hamas, an official briefed on the talks said.

The official said the 12 Thai hostages were all men.

Lucy Williamson
Reporting from the West Bank

The crowd held on as darkness fell at the Beitunia checkpoint - families and supporters standing and waiting for the prisoners to arrive.

A small victory, some said, in a worsening situation here.

“It’s a sign of hope for Palestinians and Israelis,” Mohammed Khatib said, “that the ceasefire will continue and the killing will stop”.

“We would have liked this to happen without the hostages taken by Hamas,” he told me, “but without them, Israel would not let these people out.”

Lucy Williamson
Reporting from the West Bank

The road by Beitunia checkpoint, near Ramallah, is sharp with the smell of tear gas. This is the place where the 39 Palestinian detainees are due to be transferred after being released from Israeli jails.

Groups of Palestinian men and boys are facing the Israeli army lined up on the road ahead.

As we arrived, the army fired rubber bullets and tear gas towards the crowd, to push them back.

Some of the young people gathered here threw stones and tear gas canisters back towards the troops.

An uneasy calm has settled here now, as families begin to arrive. But the growing crowd is edging closer to the checkpoint again, shots have again rung out. Nerves here today are live, tension is tight in the air.

It is not clear if all Israeli hostages have been handed over to the Egyptians.

We are expecting 13 women and children who were taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October to be released today.

We will bring you more details as soon as we have them.

Egyptian sources have told the BBC that Egyptian officials have received the Israeli hostages from the Red Cross and Red Crescent at the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza.

Israeli officials will now to take them to Arish Airport and then fly them to an Israeli military airbase.

Today will be an “emotional rollercoaster” for all the families whose loved ones are being held in Gaza, says Prof Hagai Levine, from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an umbrella volunteer group formed after the 7 October attacks.

He says that some received phone calls last night from the Israeli government saying they expected family members to be released today.

"They will have to see with their own eyes that it's actually happening after seven weeks," he told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme.

He adds that that others received messages saying their loved ones are not expected to be freed.

“We need a personalised approach and treatment – many of them are children," Prof Levine says.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant will be at the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) command centre at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv during the hostage deal, the prime minister's office says., external

“The prime minister and defence minister will closely monitor the operation," a statement said.

As we've just reported (14:31 post) 13 Israeli hostages have reportedly been handed over to the Red Cross and are on their way out of Gaza. It is not clear, however, where the handover occurred and how long the journey to Rafah will take.

Once they have crossed into Egypt they will be taken to Israel in military helicopters.

We will bring you more as soon as we have it.

Image source, .

Image source, Reuters

We're monitoring live video feeds of the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt for the arrival of the 13 hostages.

There are many people waiting and there has been some movement of lorries and other vehicles in the area, but we're still waiting for the actual handover to take place.

Families in Israel have already begun to gather at hospitals ahead of the return of their relatives, where the released hostages will be taken after an initial medical assessment at an air base.

TV Channel 12 in Israel are reporting that the 13 Israeli hostages have been transferred to Red Cross and are on their way to border crossing with Egypt

We'll bring you more as we get it.

The Thai prime minister says, external that 12 Thai nationals held hostage by Hamas in Gaza have been released.

He said embassy officials were "on the way to pick them up" but did not specify where the hostages were.

It follows the Egyptian State Information Service saying: "Intensive Egyptian efforts resulted in the release of 12 Thai nationals."

There has been no comment from Hamas.

The release of Thai nationals is not part of the deal between Israel and Hamas that was brokered by Qatar.

We still await the release of 13 Israelis.

It's 4pm in Israel and Gaza - the time that 13 women and children taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October are expected to be released.

Their families have been waiting for this moment for nearly seven weeks.

Some 39 Palestinian detainees - 24 women and 15 teenage boys - will then be released from Israeli jails to the West Bank as part of a temporary ceasefire deal.

We'll bring you updates as we receive them.

It's nearly four o'clock in Israel and Gaza - and we're counting down to the release of the first hostages under the temporary Hamas-Israel truce. Here's what's expected to happen in the next few minutes and hours:

At around 14:00 GMT (16:00 local time), 13 hostages currently in Gaza are set to be released by Hamas into the custody of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who will then take them to Egypt at the Rafah border.

According to the Israeli military, they are expected to be in Israel by around 16:00 GMT, where they will be given an initial medical assessment at an airbase.

The 13 will then be taken to hospital via helicopter to be reunited with their families.

Their names have not been published, but we do know that they will all be women and children.

Once the hostages have been transferred, 39 Palestinian detainees are set to be released from Israel's Ofer prison - which is located in the Occupied West Bank - into the custody of the ICRC.

Their names have been released and we know the list contains 24 female and 15 males names,

They will be transferred to an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank and then allowed to return home, according to Israel's prison service.

Buses ready to pick up the released Palestinians have arrived at the prison in advance of the deal, while Israeli ambulances have been sent to the Kerem-Shalom border area in southern Israel earlier.

Image source, Reuters

Hamas's top political leader has said the group are committed to the truce with Israel and to the hostage swap deal, as long as "all sides" stick to the agreement.

Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar and heads up Hamas's political bureau, is reported to have also said that the negotiations were "difficult".

Hamas, a proscribed terror group in the UK, US and EU, took some 240 hostages when it attacked Israel on 7 October.

Palestinians in Gaza might be able to use the truce to look for children buried under the rubble or bury the dead, James Elder, a Unicef spokesperson who arrived in Gaza on Thursday, says.

“There’s north of a 1,000 children that are probably buried under the rubble so perhaps the ceasefire will give people a chance to look for family members, perhaps it will give families a chance to bury the dead,” Elder told the BBC's Today programme.

Elder says everything bears the marks of devastation, “whether you’ve got these frightened faces of children or whether you have those shattered walls and broken windows, it’s all telling this story of this relentless assault”.

He also describes twisted steel and crumbling concrete, which he says are a testimony to the “brutal forces” at play.

Elder stresses that he is in the south of the Gaza strip, not the north, where the devastation is much more severe.

As we've been reporting, the IDF has told Palestinians in Gaza not to return to north Gaza, which is still an active war zone.

In a earlier post we told you how videos were circulating on social media that appear to show Palestinians being shot at as they try to head from the south of Gaza to the north of the strip today.

The BBC Verify team has geolocated this footage of a crowd fleeing south-ward along Salah al-Din road to the east of Al Mughraqa as small arms fire is heard coming from the north.