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Hamas published the first two of a expected six Israeli hostages, which are to be freed from captivity in Gaza on Saturday, as a precarious ceasefire, which is defeated by accusations, approaches the end of their first phase.
Avera Mengistu, a 39-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli man, who described his family as mentally ill and has been taking place since 2014.
Mengistu had been captured by Hamas after he had come to Gaza Strip by himself, while Shoham was captured on October 7, 2023 during the attack by the Palestinian militant group on Israel.
The Israeli military confirmed its release and said they were brought to South Israel from the Red Cross.
Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22 and Omer Wenkert, 23, will be released later on Saturday together with Hisham al-Sayed, 36.
In return for the release of all six, Israel is released 600 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds without indictment or legal proceedings and 110 lives or long convictions after they were condemned in military prisons for violence against Israelis.
Including today’s swap, Hamas will have released 29 hostages, four of them, in return for more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners.
The six are the last living hostages, which are exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as part of the first phase of the ceasefire, which will end on Thursday with the release of four additional corpses.
The second phase for which the negotiations have still seriously started could see a permanent end of 15 months of war in exchange for the release of around 60 remaining hostages, which include male soldiers and many suspect that they are dead.
The six -week first phase is close to the collapse and led to interventions from the USA, Egypt and Qatar to keep them up to date.
In the latest Flashpoint, Hamas released an unidentified body at the beginning of this week instead of that of Shiri Bibas, a 32-year-old Israeli mother, whose two small children were also captured during the attacks on October 7. Your bodies were released at the beginning of this week.
On Friday, Hamas released a second body that was later identified by Israeli forensic pathologists as Bibas, mother of Kfir and Ariel. Hamas accused chaos in the broken Palestinian enclave for the handover of the wrong body.
In Israel, the conquest of the Bibas family – the father of the children was released in the first stage of exchange in February – to a symbol of the brutality of Hamas in the attack that triggered the war in the Gaza, and the failure of the Israeli authorities For protection to them.
The Israeli military said on Friday that autopsies showed that both children were murdered during their captivity instead of killed by an Israeli air raid, as Hamas said since November 2023.
“The terrorists did not shot the two boys – they killed them with their bare hands,” said the Israeli military spokesman at the Reard Admiral Daniel Hagari. “After that, they committed terrible actions to cover up these atrocities.”
Despite the first phase of the ceasefire, Israel has sent a negotiation team with a low level for discussions in the second stage to Cairo, but so far only a few progress has been made. Hamas has given its willingness to continue negotiations in the second phase.
Hamas killed at least 1,200 people in its cross -border raid on October 7 in Israel and, according to local officials, took around 250 hostages. The retribution of Israel killed almost 50,000 Palestinians, health officers in Gaza said and the enclave – the home of over 2.3 million Palestinians – left under the grip of a humanitarian disaster.
