Second round of releases under the truce agreement with Israel. After the release of three Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, Hamas must release four Israeli women held in the Gaza Strip on Saturday. Hamas published this Friday the list of those who are to be released this weekend.
“Today, Hamas will hand over the names of the four prisoners as part of the second phase of the exchange” of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, indicated Bassem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau based in Doha, in a telephone interview.
They are Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag, four Israeli soldiers, confirms Reuters, citing Hamas.
“The Al-Qassam Brigades (armed branch of Hamas) and other resistance factions will release the four prisoners on Saturday, before the scheduled time” and hand them over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Bassem added. Naim.
26 hostages still to be released
Three young women have already been released. There will therefore still be 26 hostages available for release 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.
-VideoIn Israel and Gaza, emotion after the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinians
During the first phase of the truce, 33 hostages held in Gaza are to be released in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held by Israel, and the Israeli army is to withdraw from part of the territory. This initial 42-day truce is supposed to allow an influx of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory, besieged by Israel since the start of the war, and provides for the entry of 600 trucks per day.
But the rest of the schedule remains uncertain. The terms of the second phase, which should see a definitive end to the war and the release of all hostages, must be negotiated over the next six weeks.
Of 251 people kidnapped during Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war, 91 are still held hostage in Gaza, 34 of whom died according to the Israeli army.
