Freed Palestinian inmates were greeted by a cheering crowd in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, after Hamas released three Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip in the fourth exchange under the group’s ceasefire deal with Israel.
Three other buses carrying freed Palestinians also arrived in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, with the inmates in gray prison uniforms met by hundreds of well-wishers.
In Ramallah, the bus carrying the inmates struggled to make its way through the jubilant throng of supporters as it arrived from the Israeli-run Ofer Prison.
Photo: AFP
Several of the freed inmates were hoisted onto the crowd’s shoulders, including an elderly man who raised his crutches over his head in a triumphant pose.
Earlier in Gaza, hostages Ofer Kalderon and Yarden Bibas were paraded on stage by Hamas fighters before being handed over to the Red Cross in the southern city of Khan Yunis. American-Israeli Keith Siegel was freed shortly thereafter in a similar ceremony at Gaza City’s port in the north.
The Israeli military later confirmed that all three were back in Israel.
Photo: AFP
Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum hailed the release as “a ray of light in the darkness.”
French-Israeli hostage Kalderon’s uncle Shemi said: “We have waited for this moment for a very long time.”
“I hope that this is a sign of the rebirth of the people of Israel, not just of Ofer, not just of the hostages,” he said.
After holding the hostages for more than 15 months, militants in Gaza began releasing them on Jan. 19 under the terms of the ceasefire deal with Israel.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants have so far handed over 18 hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and children.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group had said Israel would free 183 prisoners yesterday.
Hamas sources said a fifth hostage-prisoner exchange would take place on Saturday next week.
During their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which started the Gaza war, militants abducted Siegel from the Kfar Aza kibbutz community, and Bibas and Kalderon from kibbutz Nir Oz.
Militants took 251 people hostage that day. Of those, 76 remain in Gaza, including at least 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Those seized include Bibas’ wife, Shiri, and their two children, whom Hamas has declared dead, although Israeli officials have not confirmed that.
Bibas’s sons — Kfir, the youngest hostage, whose second birthday was earlier this month, and his older brother, Ariel, whose fifth birthday was in August last year — have become symbols of the hostages’ ordeal.
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