Two Israeli hostages, one of the last live captives to be released as part of a fragile truce, were released on Saturday by Palestinian militants, making them eligible for release.
The release of the captives comes after Shiri Bibas’s family earlier confirmed the receipt of her remains in Israel, a heartfelt two days.
Since the start of the Gaza War, Bibas and her two young sons have become Israeli hostages’ symbols.
During their unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which lasted for more than 15 months, Palestinian militants seized dozens of prisoners and seized dozens of prisoners in the Gaza Strip.
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In Rafah, in southern Gaza, militants led Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu onto a stage. Before being given over to the Red Cross, which then drove them away in a convoy, Shoham was forced to address the gathering, flanked by armed and masked fighters wearing only black.
The men were taken into custody by Israeli security forces, according to the military, and they were then brought back home.
As they watched a broadcast of the release, hundreds of people gathered at a site known as “Hostages Square” in Tel Aviv, Israel, and reacted with applause and some appearances of weep.
In a separate ceremony in the center of Gaza on Saturday morning, four other hostages will be freed.
The names of the six Israelis who had been freed had been published by the Israeli campaign group Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Eliya Cohen, Mengistu, and Shoham were also on the list, along with Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, and Hisham al-Sayed.
Sayed and Mengistu had been detained in Gaza for about ten years.
The first phase of a ceasefire agreement, which began on January 19 and is scheduled to expire in early March, was completed.
Four hostages would also be released later in the morning from central Gaza’s Nuseirat, according to a Hamas source, according to a source who spoke to AFP.
 , Well-rehearsed ceremony
The militants staged stages in front of large posters advertising the militants’ cause or praising fallen fighters in both locations in preparation for a now well-rehearsed ceremony.
The Red Cross has repeatedly pleaded for dignified handovers.
After months of bombardment and strikes that led to the death of the group’s top leaders, Hamas put on a show of force in Rafah under the icy winter rain. Some fighters held automatic weapons, others rocket launchers, as nationalistic Palestinian music blared.
Buildings that had been destroyed by the war had their green flag fluttering around the square.
As part of the exchange, Israel promised to release 602 prisoners, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club’s advocacy group.
The majority of the people who were detained after the war started, according to a spokeswoman for the NGO. After their release, some of the prisoners would be deported outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories, according to her.
Those who were scheduled to be expelled were incarcerated.
21 Israeli hostages who are currently living there have been freed as a result of the ceasefire, in exchange for more than 100 Palestinian prisoners who have been released from Israeli custody.
Following the first hostage-body transfer on Thursday, the living hostages were released on Saturday.
Israeli analysis revealed that Shiri Bibas’s remains were not actually hers, stoking a wave of grief and rage. Hamas claimed Shiri Bibas’s remains were one of the four returned on Thursday.
Hamas then acknowledged the possibility of “an error or a mismatch of bodies” as a result of Israeli bombing the area.
The Red Cross confirmed the transfer of more human remains to Israel “at the request of both parties,” but it did not specify who they were.
“We received the news we feared the most this morning following the Institute of Forensic Medicine’s identification process.” Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest”, the Bibas family said in a statement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Friday to “ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement” in the face of international criticism over how he handled the conflict and the hostages.
 , ‘No forgiveness ‘
On Friday, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, after an analysis of the remains, that Palestinian militants had killed the Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, “with their bare hands” in November 2023.
Hamas has long maintained that an Israeli airstrike early in the conflict had killed both them and their mother.
Shiri’s sister-in-law, Ofri Bibas, said Friday that the family was “not seeking revenge right now”, while levelling a measure of the blame at Netanyahu, telling him there would be “no forgiveness” for abandoning the mother and her young sons.
A fourth body, that of Oded Lifshitz, 83, was also returned Thursday.
The October 7 attack that sparked the war, which Hamas and its allies carried out, held 251 people hostage. 35 hostages, according to the Israeli military, are still held in Gaza, of which 65 are still alive.
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.
Source: Channels TV
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