Israel on Saturday prepared to receive six more hostages from Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, after accusations over the return of a misidentified body this week threatened to derail a fragile truce......CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE>>>>>
According to officials from the militant group, Hamas, the six, which is the last living hostages from a group of 33 due to be released in the first stage of the ceasefire deal agreed last month, were expected to be handed over at around 8.30 a.m. (0630 GMT).
It was gathered that four of the hostages, Eliya Cohen, 27, Tal Shoham, 40, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Omer Wenkert, 23, were seized by Hamas gunmen during their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Another two, Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, and Avera Mengistu, 39, are said to have been held by Hamas since they entered Gaza separately under unexplained circumstances around a decade ago.
In return, Israel is expected to release 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in its jails in the latest stage of an exchange that has held up despite a series of problems that have come close to sinking it on different occasions.
Recall that late on Thursday, Israel accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire by handing over an unidentified body instead of the remains of hostage Shiri Bibas that were due to be returned along with the bodies of her two small sons.
According to Hamas, her remains appear to have been mixed up with other human remains recovered from the rubble after an Israeli air strike that it said killed her and her two sons in November 2023.
On Friday, the group handed over another body, which Israeli forensic officials were preparing to investigate to confirm the identity.
The Bibas family, kidnapped along with their father in the October 7 attack, has been an emblem of the trauma suffered by Israel on that day and the misidentification of the remains of Shiri Bibas, as well as the staged handover of their coffins by Hamas outraged Israelis.
According to the Israeli military, intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of 10-month-old Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel showed that both had been killed deliberately by their captors.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to make Hamas pay the full price for failing to return the body but he held back from walking away from the ceasefire agreement, which took effect on January 19.
Hamas, which has itself accused Israel of breaching the ceasefire by blocking vital aid supplies into Gaza, nonetheless formally informed Israel of the names of the hostages to be released on Saturday in a sign the handover would go ahead.