A top Hamas official says the militant group will free six living Israeli hostages on Saturday and return the bodies of four others on Thursday, a surprise acceleration in releases that apparently comes in return for Israel’s allowing mobile homes and construction equipment into the devastated Gaza Strip.
The six are the last living hostages set to be freed under the ceasefire’s first phase. The warring sides have yet to negotiate the second and more difficult phase, in which Hamas would release dozens more hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal.
Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, in prerecorded remarks released on Tuesday, said the “Bibas family” would be included in the handover of four bodies, apparently referring to Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, who for many Israelis embody the captives’ plight.
Israel has not confirmed their deaths, and the prime minister’s office urged the public not to distribute “photos, names and rumours” after the announcement by Hamas.
“In the past few hours, we have been in turmoil,” surviving members of the Bibas family said in a statement released on Tuesday by a group representing the relatives of hostages.
“Until we receive definitive confirmation, our journey is not over.”
Israel has said it was gravely concerned about the Bibas family, while Hamas said they were killed in an Israeli airstrike early in the war. Yarden Bibas, the husband and father, was kidnapped separately and released this month.
Kfir, who was nine months old at the time, was the youngest hostage taken in Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. A video of the abduction showed Shiri swaddling her redheaded boys in a blanket and being whisked away by armed men.
The six living hostages slated for release are Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham Al-Sayed, and Avera Mengistu, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.
Cohen, 27, Shem Tov, 22, and Wenkert, 23, were abducted from a music festival. Shoham was taken from the hard-hit community of Kibbutz Beeri. Al-Sayed, 36, and Mengistu, 39, have both been held since crossing into Gaza years before the October 7 attack.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to allow long-requested mobile homes and construction equipment into Gaza as part of efforts to accelerate the hostages’ release.
Hamas last week threatened to hold up releases, citing the refusal to allow in mobile homes and heavy equipment among other alleged violations of the truce.
Israel began allowing entry of rubble-removing equipment on Tuesday, according to an Associated Press journalist in southern Gaza and Egypt’s state-run media.
