Israeli-Palestinian prisoners swap underway
07:25 18/10/2011 MOSCOW, October 18 (RIA Novosti) - Trucks with hundreds of Palestinian inmates are leaving Israeli jails as long-awaited prisoners swap for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit began in the early hours of Tuesday.
Reuters reported that a heavily guarded military convoy of trucks with prisoners left a prison located in the Negev prison, in southern Israel, while a group of female inmates departed from a prison in central Israel.
The swap for Shalit is expected to take place at the Rafah crossing point on the border with Egypt at 6:00 a.m. local time (04:00 GMT). Local authorities closed off the border crossing as a restricted area.
Israel agreed to release 1,027 Palestinians kept in Israeli prisons in exchange for Shalit last week. The first group of 477 prisoners will be released on Tuesday, including 287 sentenced for life, while the remaining 550 will be freed in two months.
Shalit, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, was captured in June 2006, aged 19, by Palestinian militants in a raid near the Gaza Strip.
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