GAZA STRIP — Shadi Abu Sido’s world shattered in Israeli detention when guards told him his wife and two children had been killed.

“I got hysterical,” the Gaza Palestinian photographer said.

It wasn’t until his release on Monday, part of the U.S.-mediated ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that halted two years of war, that he discovered his loved ones were alive.

His wife, Hanaa Bahlul, raced down the hallway of his family’s house in Khan Younis and leapt into his arms. He spun her in the air as they clung to each other. Abu Sido kissed his children’s cheeks again and again, murmuring “my love” as he held the daughter and son he thought he would never see again.

“I heard her voice, I heard the voice of my children, I was astonished, it cannot be explained, they were alive. I saw my wife and children alive. Imagine amid death – life,” he said.

Abu Sido, a photojournalist, said he was detained at Shifa hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on March 18, 2024.

He was among 1,700 Palestinians detained by Israeli forces during the devastating war in Gaza and released on Monday, along with 250 prisoners convicted or suspected of involvement in deadly attacks, in exchange for 20 Israeli hostages held by Hamas since its October 2023 cross-border assault.