CAIRO (AP) — A top Hamas official says the militant group will free six living Israeli hostages on Saturday and return the bodies of four others on Thursday, a surprise acceleration in releases apparently in trade for Israel’s allowing mobile homes and construction equipment into the devastated Gaza Strip.
The six are the last living hostages set to be freed during the ceasefire’s first phase in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
The announcement by Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, in prerecorded remarks released Tuesday, said the dead would include the “Bibas family” — two young boys and their mother who for many Israelis have come to symbolize the plight of those taken captive. Israel has long expressed grave concern about Shiri Bibas and her sons, Kfir and Ariel, who Hamas claimed had been killed in an Israeli airstrike early in the war. Husband and father Yarden Bibas was kidnapped separately and released this month.
Kfir, who was 9 months old at the time, was the youngest hostage taken in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed 1,200 in Israel and ignited the war. A video of the abduction showed Shiri swaddling her redheaded boys in a blanket and being whisked away by armed men.
The six living hostages slated for release are Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham Al-Sayed, and Avera Mengistu, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Tuesday. Cohen, 27, Shem Tov, 22, and Wenkert, 23, were abducted from a music festival. Shoham was taken from the hard-hit community of Kibbutz Beeri. Al-Sayed, 36, and Mengistu, 39, have both been held since crossing into Gaza years before the Oct. 7 attack.
The release of all six this week would mark an acceleration of the ceasefire deal, which called for Hamas to release three living hostages Saturday, with three more to be freed a week later. When the deal was made, it called only for the bodies of the dead to be returned by the end of the first phase.
Israel is expected to continue releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including many serving life sentences for deadly attacks, in exchange for the hostages. Others were detained without charge. During the first phase, Israel is also due to release all women and children seized from Gaza since the war began.
The warring sides have yet to negotiate the second and more difficult phase, in which Hamas would release dozens more hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal.