10 hours Ago
AP video showed the ambulances waiting among a crowd with a line of Hamas fighters nearby in Rafah, where two of the hostages are expected to be handed over. The other four are to be handed over in central Gaza. The latest release of hostages – as well as the freeing of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel – is set to go ahead despite increased tensions between Israel and Hamas that have clouded the future of the fragile ceasefire deal.
The exchange is going ahead after a dispute this week when Hamas initially handed over the wrong body for Shiri Bibas, an Israeli mother of two young boys abducted by militants. The remains that Hamas transferred with her sons’ bodies on Thursday were later determined to be those of an unidentified Palestinian woman. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed revenge for “a cruel and malicious violation”, while Hamas suggested it had been a mistake.
On Friday night, the small militant group believed to have been holding Ms Bibas and her sons – the Palestinian Mujahedeen Brigades – said it handed over a second body. On Saturday morning, Ms Bibas’s family said Israeli forensic authorities had confirmed the remains were hers. Despite the dispute, Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said it would go ahead with the release of the six Israeli hostages planned for Saturday.
The six are the last living hostages to be freed during the ceasefire’s first phase. They include Eliya Cohen, 27; Omer Shem Tov, 22; and Omer Wenkert, 23. All three were abducted from a music festival during the October 7 2023 attack.
Tal Shoham, 40, who was taken from the community of Kibbutz Beeri, is also set to be released. Avera Mengistu, 39, and Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, who have been held since crossing into Gaza on their own several years ago, are also scheduled to be returned to Israel as part of the deal. On Saturday morning, hundreds of people gathered in a rainy Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip as Hamas prepared to release the hostages.
More than 600 Palestinians jailed in Israel will be freed in exchange, the Palestinian prisoners media office said Friday. The prisoners set for release include 50 serving life sentences, 60 with long sentences, 47 who were released under a previous hostage-for-prisoner exchange and 445 prisoners from Gaza arrested since the war began. Hamas has said it will also release four more bodies next week, completing the first phase of the ceasefire.
If that plan is carried out, Hamas would retain about 60 hostages, about half of whom are believed to be alive. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal. Mr Netanyahu, with the full backing of the Trump administration, says he is committed to destroying Hamas’s military and governing capacities and returning all the hostages, goals widely seen as mutually exclusive.
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