long-awaited hostage release could be just a few hours away. the expected truce with hamas appears to be on track at this hour, setting the stage for 13 captives to return from gaza on the first day of the temporary pause in the hostilities. oren liebermann has all of the late-breaking developments for us. reporter: after nearly seven weeks of war, it is the storm before the calm. final hours of fighting in gaza ticking down until a pause in the conflict set for early friday morning. 13 hostages, women and children, will then be freed by hamas on friday afternoon, transferred to the red cross and back to israel. we are waiting on a day-by-day base for a phone call to see if our loved ones are coming back. reporter: the pause is set to last four days. the spokesperson for qatar s foreign ministry hope that the deal would be the basis for a longer pause. we are hoping that this will work as a proof of concept for de-escalation measures including extending this humanitar
shop and watch football on the same feed. good luck. thanks for joining me. i m max foster. cnn this morning starts right now. good morning, everyone. we re glad you re with us. we begin with breaking news out of israel. right now, a temporary truce is underway between israel and hamas. hours from now, the first round of hostages will be released. at 9:00 a.m. the eastern time, hamas is expected to start freeing 13 hostages abducted during the october 7th terror attacks. it s six hours since fighting was paused in gaza. the truce appears to be holding. a column of tanks and armored vehicles was seen heading away from the gaza strip. drone video shows families walking the streets in southern gaza this morning after the truce began. you can see the destruction from the airstrikes. part of the hostage deal was allowing desperately needed humanitarian aid into gaza. we have been seeing those lines of trucks crossing in from egypt. an egyptian official says 200 trucks fu