The Palestinian militant movement Hamas handed four female Israeli soldier hostages over to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza on Saturday, releasing them in return for some 200 Palestinian prisoners.
The four hostages were led onto a podium in Gaza City amid a large crowd of Palestinians and surrounded by dozens of armed Hamas men. They waved and smiled before being led off, entering ICRC vehicles and being transported to Israeli forces.
The Israeli military said it had received the four in Gaza. They are being released in exchange for 200 Palestinian prisoners under a ceasefire agreement aimed at ending the 15-month-old war in Gaza.
The four soldiers — Karina Ariev, Daniela Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag — were all stationed at an observation post on the edge of Gaza and abducted by Hamas fighters who overran their base during the attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.
Video showing the capture of the four, as well as another soldier, at the Nahal Oz military base was broadcast on Israeli television last year after the soldiers’ families gave permission in a bid to increase awareness and build pressure to get them back.
The images, taken from Hamas bodycam video recovered by the Israeli military, showed the women looking dazed and still wearing their pyjamas, sitting on the floor with their hands tied, some of them bloodied.
After being reunited with their families at an Israeli military base near the Gaza border on Saturday, the released hostages were to be taken to a hospital in central Israel, the Israeli Health Ministry said.
Hamas said the 200 prisoners being freed on Saturday as part of the exchange include convicted militants serving life sentences for their involvement in attacks that killed dozens of people. Around 70 are set to be deported, Hamas said.
Saturday’s exchange is the second since a ceasefire began last Sunday, when Hamas handed over three Israeli female civilians in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners.
Two phases
The ceasefire agreement, worked out after months of on-off negotiations brokered by Qatar and Egypt and backed by the United States, has halted the fighting for the first time since a truce that lasted just a week in November 2023.
In the first six-week phase of the deal, Hamas has agreed to release 33 hostages, including children, women, older men and the sick and injured, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, while Israeli troops pull back from some of their positions in the Gaza Strip.
In a subsequent phase, the two sides would negotiate the exchange of the remaining hostages, including men of military age, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, which lies largely in ruins after 15 months of fighting and bombardment.
After Saturday’s release, 90 hostages remain in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities, who have declared around a third of them dead in absentia. The figure includes six Thai hostages whose condition is not known.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza following the Oct 7 Hamas attack, when militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health authorities there.
Israel has lost more than 400 soldiers in Gaza combat. Hamas has not revealed how many fighters it has lost. Israel estimates that more than a third of Gaza’s death toll is militants.