(Cairo) Hamas will submit on Friday the list of four hostages who are to be released the next day, the second series of releases under the truce agreement with Israel, a senior official of the Palestinian Islamist movement told AFP.
Posted at 7:15 a.m.
“Today, Hamas will hand over the names of the four prisoners (hostages, Editor’s note) as part of the second phase of the exchange” of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, indicated Bassem Naïm, member of the office policy of Hamas based in Doha, in a telephone interview.
The first phase of the truce, which is to last six weeks and began last Sunday, is supposed to allow the release of 33 hostages held in Gaza against a much larger number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Three young women have already been released. There will therefore still be 26 hostages available for release on Saturday evening in this first phase.
According to the agreement, immediately after the release of these four new hostages, “people displaced in the south of the Gaza Strip will begin to return to the North”, specified the head of the Palestinian movement: “An Egyptian-Qatari committee will supervise implementation of the agreement on the ground.
-A Palestinian source close to Hamas also described a process identical to that of last Sunday, as well as that of the hostages released during the previous truce, at the end of November 2023.
“The Al-Qassam Brigades (armed branch of Hamas, editor’s note) and other resistance factions will release the four prisoners on Saturday, before the scheduled time” to entrust them to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a added this source.
The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 91 are still hostages in Gaza, 34 of whom are dead according to the army.
Others were announced dead by Hamas but without Israeli confirmation or evidence.
In retaliation, Israel launched a devastating offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip, which left at least 47,283 people dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry. The operation also caused a humanitarian disaster.
