AFP, Gaza City

Freed Palestinian inmates were greeted by a cheering crowd in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, after Hamas released three Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip in the fourth exchange under the group’s ceasefire deal with Israel.

Three other buses carrying freed Palestinians also arrived in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, with the inmates in grey prison uniforms met by hundreds of well-wishers.

In Ramallah, the bus carrying the inmates struggled to make its way through the jubilant throng of supporters as it arrived from the Israeli-run Ofer Prison.

Several of the freed inmates were hoisted onto the crowd’s shoulders, including an elderly man who raised his crutches over his head in a triumphant pose.

Earlier in Gaza, hostages Ofer Kalderon and Yarden Bibas were paraded on stage by Hamas fighters before being handed over to the Red Cross in the southern city of Khan Yunis. American-Israeli Keith Siegel was freed shortly thereafter in a similar ceremony at Gaza City’s port in the north.

Israel’s military later confirmed that all three were back in Israel.

Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum hailed the release as “a ray of light in the darkness”.

After holding the hostages for more than 15 months, Hamas began releasing them on January 19 under the terms of the ceasefire deal with Israel.

Groups in Gaza have so far handed over 18 hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and minors.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group had said Israel would free 183 prisoners yesterday.

Hamas sources said a fifth hostage-prisoner exchange would take place next Saturday.

After yesterday’s hostage release, Gaza’s key Rafah border crossing was reopened, with the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory saying 50 Palestinian patients had gone through the crossing to Egypt.

The fragile ceasefire’s 42-day first phase hinges on the release of a total of 33 hostages in exchange for around 1,900 people, mostly Palestinians, held in Israeli jails.

Negotiations for a second phase of the deal are set to start on Monday, according to a timeline provided by an Israeli official.

The second phase is expected to cover the release of the remaining captives and to include discussions on a more permanent end to the war.