Large white buses carrying the detainees exited the gates of Israel's Ofer prison, just outside the West Bank city of Ramallah, as celebratory fireworks erupted overhead

Crowds of Palestinians thronged the buses, chanting and cheering

According to a list provided by the Palestinian Authority's Commission for Prisoners' Affairs, all of those released were women or minors

Israel detained all of the people on the list for what it said were offences related to the country's security, from throwing stones to more serious accusations such as attempt to murder

The Israeli military, which occupies the West Bank, repeatedly warned Palestinians against any form of public celebration

The release took place in the middle of the night, in what Palestinians criticised as an attempt to dampen the mood and deter crowds from welcoming the prisoners home

The most prominent of the detainees being freed is Khalida Jarrar, 62, a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, a secular Leftist faction that was involved in hijackings and other attacks against Israel in the 1970s but has scaled back its militant activities in recent years

Since her arrest in December 2023, Jarrar was held under indefinitely renewable six-month administrative detention orders, a practice denounced by human rights groups as a violation of international law

Dalal Khaseeb, 53, sister of late senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri -- who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut in January 2024 -- is also being released, along with Abla Abdelrasoul, wife of jailed PFLP leader Ahmad Saadat