The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel will go into effect in less than 24 hours, said Qatar’s foreign ministry on Saturday.

In a post on X, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Majid al-Ansari said the ceasefire will start at 8:30 a.m. local time (1:30 a.m. ET) Sunday. He advised people to exercise caution when the agreement goes into effect and wait for directions from officials.

Early Saturday morning, Israel’s cabinet approved the deal for a ceasefire in Gaza that would release dozens of hostages and pause the 15-month war with Hamas, bringing the sides a step closer to ending their deadliest and most destructive fighting ever.

Despite the ceasefire news, sirens sounded across central Israel on Saturday, with the army saying it intercepted projectiles launched from Yemen. The Iran-backed Houthis have stepped up their missile attacks, in recent weeks.

The group says the attacks are part of their campaign aimed at pressuring Israel and the West over the war in Gaza.

There were also continued Israeli strikes into Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 23 people were killed in the previous day.

On Saturday, Palestinian militant spokesperson Abu Hamza called on the hostages’ families to ask the Israeli military to stop its strikes in the final hours before the ceasefire takes effect, saying this “would be reason for killing their children.”

Under the first phase of the ceasefire, 33 hostages are set to be released over the next six weeks, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The remainder, including male soldiers, are to be released in a second phase that will be negotiated during the first. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal.

According to the ceasefire plan, approved by the cabinet and signed by Israel’s national security adviser, the exchange will begin Sunday at 4 p.m. (9 a.m. ET). During each exchange, prisoners will be released by Israel after the hostages have arrived safely.

The plan says that during Phase 1, some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners will be released, in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages, both alive and dead. Among the prisoners, 1,167 are residents in Gaza who were held by Israel but were not involved in the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. All women and children under 19 from Gaza held by Israel will be freed during this phase.

All Palestinian prisoners who were convicted of deadly attacks will be exiled, either to Gaza or abroad, and barred from returning to Israel or the West Bank. Some will be exiled for three years and others permanently, according to the plan.

Key questions remain about the ceasefire — the second achieved during the war — however, including the names of the 33 hostages who are to be released and who among them is still alive.

Hamas has agreed to free three female hostages on Day 1 of the deal, four on Day 7 and the remaining 26 over the following five weeks.

Palestinian detainees are to be released as well. Israel’s justice ministry published a list of more than 700 who are to be freed in the deal’s first phase and said the release will not begin before 4 p.m. local time Sunday. All people on the list are younger or female.

Also during the first phase, Israeli troops are to pull back into a buffer zone about a kilometre wide inside Gaza, along its borders with Israel.

That will allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes, including in Gaza City and northern Gaza. With most of Gaza’s population driven into massive, squalid tent camps, Palestinians are desperate to get back to their homes, even though many were destroyed or heavily damaged by Israel’s campaign.

Omri Miran was among the men taken hostage by militants who stormed Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. His brother-in-law, Moshe Lavi, told CBC News on Saturday that Miran will not be among those who are to be released in the first stage of the agreement.

Lavi said all of the hostages should be released together, for humanitarian reasons, because of all the hardship they have faced.

“After 470 days in captivity, imagine that, can you believe that someone is not in humanitarian need?” he said.

The largely devastated territory should see a surge in humanitarian aid thanks to the agreement. Trucks carrying aid lined up Friday on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. On Saturday, two Egyptian government ministers arrived in the northern Sinai Peninsula to oversee the preparations for the delivery of aid and to receive the evacuation of wounded patients, the health ministry said.

WATCH | Number of dead from the war could be much higher, report suggests:

Gaza dead significantly underreported, report suggests

A new report published in The Lancet journal suggests that the number of people killed in Gaza in the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war could be 40 per cent higher than reported by Hamas officials.

Hamas triggered the war with its cross-border attack into Israel that killed some 1,200 people and left some 250 others captive. Nearly 100 hostages remain in Gaza.

Israel responded with a devastating offensive that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and militants but say women and children make up more than half the dead.