NUSEIRAT, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian militants on Saturday freed six Israeli hostages, the last living captives to be released under the first phase of a fragile truce that is also expected to see Palestinian prisoners released.
Freedom for the captives caps an emotional two days in Israel, where the family of another hostage, Shiri Bibas, earlier on Saturday confirmed receipt of her remains.
Bibas and her two young sons had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by Israeli hostages since the Gaza war began.
Palestinian militants seized dozens of captives during their unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered more than 15 months of war in the Gaza Strip.
At a ceremony in Nuseirat, central Gaza, masked Hamas militants brought onto a stage Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Israeli-Argentine Omer Wenkert, 23.
They waved while holding release certificates before their handover to the Red Cross, who took them away in a convoy after more than 16 months of captivity, an AFP correspondent said.
The military said they later were back home on Israeli soil.
At a similar ceremony earlier Saturday in Rafah, southern Gaza, militants handed over Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 38, who both appeared dazed.
Shoham was made to address the gathering, flanked by armed and masked fighters dressed all in black.
In the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, hundreds who gathered at a site known as “Hostages Square” applauded and some appeared to weep as they watched the releases.
A sixth hostage, thought to be Hisham Al-Sayed, 37, was also later handed over to the Red Cross, Israel’s military said.
Sayed, a Bedouin Muslim, and Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, were captured in Gaza around a decade ago after they entered the territory individually on their own accord.
“Our family has endured 10 years and five months of unimaginable suffering,” Mengistu’s family said in a statement.
Relatives of Shoham wept and embraced as they watched his handover, video released by Israel’s government showed.
“We saw that Tal seems well considering the circumstances. An enormous weight is lifted from us,” the family of the Austrian-Israeli dual national said in a statement.
The releases came under the first phase of a ceasefire deal which began on January 19 and is due to expire in early March.
At both locations the militants had prepared for a now well-practiced ceremony, with stages in front of large posters promoting the militants’ cause or praising fallen fighters.
The Red Cross has repeatedly appealed for handovers to take place in a dignified manner.
Under a cold winter rain in Rafah, and in Nuseirat, Hamas staged a show of force after months of bombardment and strikes that killed the group’s top leaders. Some fighters held rifles, others rocket launchers, as nationalistic Palestinian music blared.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel would free 602 inmates, most of them Gazans arrested during the war, on Saturday as part of the exchange.
The ceasefire has so far seen 24 living Israeli hostages freed from Gaza in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.
On Thursday the first transfer of hostages’ bodies took place under the truce.
Hamas had said Shiri Bibas’s remains were among the four bodies returned but Israeli analysis concluded they were not in fact hers, sparking grief and anger.
Hamas then admitted a possible “mix-up of bodies,” which it attributed to Israeli bombing of the area.
Late Friday the Red Cross confirmed the transfer of more human remains to Israel “at the request of both parties.”
Early Saturday, the Bibas family said in a statement that after an identification process, “we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — under domestic pressure over his handling of the war and the hostages — vowed Hamas would pay “the full price” for what he termed a violation of the truce deal over the return of Shiri Bibas.
Israel’s military said that, after an analysis of the remains, Palestinian militants killed the Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, “with their bare hands” in November 2023.
The family on Saturday said it has “not received any such details from official sources.”
Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.
Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during the October 7 attack that sparked the war. There are 62 hostages still in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,215 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.
