Hamas and Israel will conduct their next swap of the Gaza ceasefire on Saturday, with three Israelis, including the Israeli-Argentine father of the youngest hostages, to be freed in return for 90 people held in Israeli jails.
After holding them hostage for 15 months, militants in Gaza began releasing captives on January 19, when the first phase of a ceasefire with Israel took effect.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants have so far handed over 15 hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and minors.
Israeli campaign group, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, named the captives to be released on Saturday as Israeli-Argentine citizen Yarden Bibas, 35, Keith Siegel, 64, who also has US citizenship, and Ofer Kalderon, 54, who also holds French nationality.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed it had received the names of the three hostages to be released.
In exchange, Israel will free 90 prisoners, nine of whom are serving life sentences, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said.
During their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which started the Gaza war, militants abducted Siegel from the Kfar Aza kibbutz community, and Kalderon and Bibas from kibbutz Nir Oz.
Militants took a total of 251 people hostage that day. Of those, 79 still remain in Gaza, including at least 34 the military says are dead.
Those seized include the wife and two children of Bibas, whom Hamas has declared dead, although Israeli officials have not confirmed that.
The two Bibas boys – Kfir, the youngest hostage, whose second birthday fell earlier this month, and his older brother Ariel whose fifth birthday passed in August last year – have become symbols of the suffering of the hostages held in Gaza.
The children were taken along with their mother, Shiri Silberman. Hamas says an Israeli airstrike in November 2023 killed the boys and their mother.
«Our Yarden is supposed to return tomorrow and we are so excited but Shiri and the children still haven’t returned,» the Bibas family said on Instagram.
«We have such mixed emotions and we are facing extremely complex days.»
The children and their mother were on the list of 33 hostages to be released as part of the ceasefire agreement signed between Israel and Hamas. However, the Islamist group did not confirm the condition of the Argentine family members and concern is growing among their relatives.
Israel confirmed on Monday that only 25 of the hostages on the list handed over by Hamas are still alive. The pact provides for the release of women and children first, raising doubts about the fate of the children, who would be the last two minors in the hands of the extremist group.
«Hamas, where are the Bibas babies?» the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted on X. «Four-hundred and eighty-three days have passed. Where are they?»
The latest hostages released by Hamas
Hamas on Thursday released Israeli soldier Agam Berger, civilians Arbel Yehud and Gadi Moses and five Thai citizens.
The hostages released after 482 days in captivity will be exchanged for 110 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons as part of the ceasefire agreement.
The first hostage released on Thursday is a 21-year-old female soldier who was abducted on 7 October from the Nahal Oz base. The young woman was released at a crowded event in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabalia.
The woman, who is in good health, was led to a stage by hooded militiamen wearing the emblem of the al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
Two Red Cross workers, who minutes earlier had signed a document handed over by the Islamist group, were waiting for her.
After 10am local time, the young woman was loaded into an international organisation’s SUV and handed over to Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, who took her across the border for an initial medical assessment.
After 482 days in captivity, soldier Agam Berger was reunited with his parents, Shlomi and Merav Berger, at an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) facility near the Gaza border.
In a statement from the hospital, Berger’s family said: «Thank God for this moment: Agam, our hero, has returned to us after 482 days in the hands of the enemy.»
Hours later, Hamas released two more Israeli citizens. They are Arbel Yehud, a 29-year-old woman and the partner of the Israeli-Argentine Ariel Cunio, who remains kidnapped in Gaza, and Gadi Moses, an 80-year-old agronomist.
In addition, five Thai nationals, whose identities are not known, were released.
— TIMES/PERFIL
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