The Palestinian militant group Hamas delivered four hostages of Israeli soldiers to the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) on Saturday. Hours later, the Israeli authorities said they released 200 Palestinian prisoners as part of the Gaza Fuego Alto Agreement aimed at ending the 15 -month war in Gaza.
The four soldiers who were released were taken to a podium in the city of Gaza in the middle of a large multitude of Palestinians and surrounded by dozens of armed members of Hamas. The women greeted and smiled before being carried, entering Ciccr vehicles that transported them to the Israeli forces. The Israeli army said he received the four in Gaza.
The soldiers, Karina Ariev, Daniela Gilboa, Naama Levy, all 20 years old, and Liri Albag, 19, were parked in an observation post on the edge of Gaza and kidnapped by Hamas fighters who invaded her base during the attack To Israel. 723.
The video of his kidnapping was broadcast in May and showed the five recruits, covered with pyjama and stunned and some bloody, tied and inclined in a jeep. The footage was recovered from the body cameras used by armed men who attacked the base of Nahal Oz in southern Israel, where women served as surveillance observers.
After meeting with their families in an Israeli military base near the border of Gaza, the released hostages were taken to a hospital in the center of Israel, said the Israeli Ministry of Health.
In the Gilboa family house in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, Daniella’s 15 -year -old sister said the family never lost hope.
“We stayed optimistic and did everything to see her back here, for her return,” said Noam Gilboa, after watching the images broadcast on Daniella’s television released.
Hamas said that the 200 Palestinians who were part of the exchange include members of the Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), some who comply with the life imprisonment. Egyptian state television reported that Israel launched about 70 of the Palestinians to Egypt.
The ICRC said it transferred a total of 128 of the Palestinians released to Gaza and the West Bank occupied by Israel, and most would be sent to the West Bank. You could see a convoy of Red Cross bus that transported some of the released Palestinians who left the military prison of offer in the West Bank.
‘An indescribable feeling’
More than a dozen others were taken to a hospital near Khan Younis in southern Gaza for medical controls and were received by thousands of followers.
“(It) an indescribable feeling … Thank God,” said Ilham Hamad, the sister of one of the former prisoners of the European Hospital of Gaza.
“This is the first time we’ll see them after 10 years,” he told CBC News. “May the rest of the prisoners be released.”
Saturday’s exchange was the second since the fire began last Sunday and Hamas gave three Israeli civilians in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners.
The high fire agreement worked after months of intermittent negotiations negotiated by Qatar and Egypt and backed by the United States, has stopped the fight for the first time from a truce that lasted only one week in November 2023.
Hamas does not follow the launch plan, says Israel
After the launch of Saturday, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in an X position that Hamas did not comply with the high fire agreement to free Israeli civilians first. Israel had been waiting for the launch of Arbel Yehoud, one of the civilians who had hostage, on Saturday.
Israel will not allow Palestinians to cross northern Gaza until Yehoud be released, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel was expected to begin withdrawing from the Netzarim corridor, a this-west road that divides Gaza, and allowed the Palestinians displaced in the south to return north for the first time since the war began.
“We are determined to return to Arbel Yehoud, an Israeli citizen kidnapped from Nir Oz (Kibbutz), and also Shiri Bibas and their two children, Kfir and Ariel, whose well -being we are extremely worried,” the Israel military spokesman, Daniel Hagari, Hagari saying.
A Hamas official told Reuters that Yehoud is alive and will be released next Saturday.
One of the displaced Palestinians who expect to return to northern Gaza is Suhair Bakr, 53. She told CBC News that her only son died in the war shortly after leaving her house in Gaza City. She doesn’t know where she is buried.
She said that the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners “is not a victory”, considering how many houses and families have been destroyed in Gaza.
“Our victory is that we are going home, even if our houses are destroyed, although we know there is nothing to rebuild,” Bakr said. “Without water, without electricity, homeless.”
Mahmoud Al-Zain, who was also waiting on Saturday near Gaza City to have the opportunity to return, said his house was bombarded the eighth day of the war.
“We didn’t even dream that we would return,” said the 48 -year -old man.
“We have family in northern Gaza … all our childhood was in Gaza. We can’t live without gaza,” he said.
The UN Development Program Chief Achim Steiner said on Wednesday that the war has returned the development in Gaza 60 years. He said that two thirds of the buildings in the territory have been damaged or destroyed.
“You can imagine two million people, who in the Gaza Strip have lost not only their refuge, have lost public infrastructure, wastewater treatment systems, fresh water supply systems, public waste management systems .
In the first phase of six weeks of the agreement, Hamas agreed to release 33 hostages, including children, women, older and sick and injured, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, while Israeli troops move away from some of his positions in the strip of Gaza.
In a posterior phase, the two parties would negotiate the exchange of the remaining hostages, including military men, and the withdrawal of the Israeli forces of Gaza, which is largely in ruins after 15 months of struggle and bombing Israeli.
Emily Damari, 28, Doron Steinbrecher, 31, and Romi Gonen, 24, were the first three Israeli hostages released from Gaza on Sunday. Gonen was kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival, while the others were kidnapped by Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after the attack led by Hamas on October 7, when the militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli headlines. Since then, more than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health authorities there.
After last Sunday’s launch of the Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher and the recovery of the body of an Israeli soldier who disappears for a decade, Israel says that 94 Israelis and foreigners remain retained in Gaza, although it is not clear how many of They are still alive.
