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Hamas released the first two of the six expected Israeli hostages to be liberated from captivity in Gaza on Saturday, as an unsafe truce surrounded by recruitment approaching the end of its first phase.
Avera Mengistu, a 39-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli described by his family as a mental ill and was held since 2014, and Talijam, 40, were released in a detailed ceremony in Rafah , Southern Gaza, on the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Mengistu was held by Hamas after weaved in Gaza himself as he was taken captive during the attack of the Palestinian militant group in Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Israeli army confirmed their release, saying they were transported to Southern Israel from the Red Cross.
Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22 and Omer Wenkert, 23 will be released later on Saturday, along with Hisham al-Sayed, 36, a Palestinian Bedouin with Israeli nationality who likes Mengistu, is considered sick Mental and was mentally ill and was mentally ill and has been mentally ill and has been held since 2015.
In exchange for the sixth release, Israel is set to release 600 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of free or trial, and 110 serving long life or sentences after being sentenced to military prisons for violence against the Israelis.
Including today’s exchange, Hamas will have issued 29 hostages, four of them dead, in exchange for more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners.
Six are the last of live hostages to be changed to hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as part of the first phase of the ceasefire, which will end on Thursday with the issuance of four additional troops.
The second phase, for which negotiations have still begun diligently, can see a permanent end of up to 15 months war in exchange for the release of about 60 remaining hostages, which include male soldiers and also many who are supposed to have died .
The first six -week phase approached the collapse, causing interference by the US, Egypt and Qatar to help keep it on the right track.
In the latest Flashpoint, Hamas earlier released an unidentified body instead of that of the Bibas Ship, a 32-year-old Israeli mother, whose two young children were also captured in the October 7 attacks. Their bodies were released earlier this week.
Late on Friday, Hamas released a second body, then identified by Israeli forensic -legal pathologists such as Bibas, mother in Kfir and Ariel. Hamasi blamed the chaos inside the chopped Palestinian enclave for delivering the wrong body.
In Israel the capture of the Bibas family – the father of the children was left alive in February in the first phase of exchanges – has become a symbol of Hamas’s brutality in the attack that caused the Gaza war and the failure of Israeli authorities to protect them
The Israeli army said on Friday that autopsy indicated that both children were killed during their captivity, rather than killed by an Israeli air strike, as Hamas said since November 2023.
“The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys – they killed them with their naked hands,” Israeli military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said. “Then, they committed terrible acts to cover these atrocities.”
Despite the first phase of the ceasefire, Israel has sent a low -level negotiation team to Cairo for talks in the second phase, but so far a little progress has been made. Hamas has shown his willingness to continue negotiations in the second phase.
Hamas killed at least 1,200 people in Israel in his cross -border attack on October 7, and received about 250 hosts, according to local officials. Israel’s revenge has killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians, said health officials in Gaza, and left the enclave – home for over 2.3 million Palestinians – in control of a humanitarian disaster.
