Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service coming to you live from London. I'm James Kimara Sami.

After 15 months of fighting and the deaths of tens of thousands of people, three hours may not seem like much,

but this morning's delay to the cease-firing Gaza spoke volumes about the levels of distrust between

Israel and Hamas. That last-minute hitch would have tied another knot in the stomach of hostage families

and sown more doubts in the minds of civilians in Gaza hoping for some kind of return to a normal life.

While the ceasefire did finally come into effect nearly four hours ago after

Hamas released the names of the first three hostages they'll release, we don't know exactly

when they, or the larger number of Palestinian prisoners being freed by Israel, will appear.

But for the moment, it seems the skies over Gaza are quiet and there is plenty of movement

on the ground.

We've seen images of displaced Gazans heading back to their homes

and the UN says the first aid trucks have arrived in the territory.

In today's program, we'll hear from the hospitals waiting to receive those hostages from Gaza itself

and from the UN's senior humanitarian coordinator in the region.

First, though, here's how the events unfolded in the hours leading up to the truce.

At 7.30 a.m. local time, an hour before the ceasefire had been due to come into effect,

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his army not to halt its operations in Gaza

because Hamas had not provided the names of those first three hostages to be released.

Hamas blamed that on undisclosed technical reasons.

And so...

The bombing continued in Gaza.

But then just after 10 a.m., Israeli media reported that Hamas had supplied the hostage names.

...