The bodies of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, have been returned by Hamas on Thursday.
Hamas said they include the bodies of Shiri Bibas, who was aged 32 when she and her sons Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months, were abducted from their home.
The fourth body is that of Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 years old when he and his wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Red Cross vehicles arrived at the site where the handover took place, as hundreds of masked militants and onlookers gathered with flags and banners.
It is the first release of dead hostages since the ceasefire began in January.
In anticipation of the bodies being returned to Israel on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “The heart of an entire nation breaks.”
The Bibas family was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Yarden Bibas, the father, was taken separately and released on February 1.
Hamas claimed his wife, Shiri, and two children, Ariel and Kfir, were killed by an Israeli airstrike early in the war.
The Bibas family said in a statement on Wednesday that it would wait for “identification procedures” before acknowledging that their loved ones were dead.
Oded Lifshitz was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his wife Yocheved, who was freed during a weeklong ceasefire in November 2023.
Oded was a journalist who campaigned for the recognition of Palestinian rights.
Hamas-led militants abducted 251 hostages, including 30 children, in the October 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed.
So far, 24 hostages have been released under a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas paused over 15 months of war.
Israeli forces have rescued eight and have recovered dozens of bodies of people killed in the initial attack or who died in captivity.
On Saturday, Hamas are expected to release six more Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
This will be the final exchange in the first phase of the ceasefire.
Around 60 hostages who are all men still remain with Hamas, with half believed to be dead.
Hamas has said it won’t release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal.
Who are the six Israeli hostages being released by Hamas this Saturday?
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum named the six male Israeli hostages expected to be released this Saturday.
“The Hostages and Missing Families Forum welcomes with profound joy the return of Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed, and Avera Mengistu this Saturday,” the forum said in a statement.
Cohen, 27, was taken by militants from a bomb shelter near the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7 2023.
Shoham, 40, was abducted from Kibbutz Beeri, a communal farm severely impacted by the Hamas attack.
His wife, their two children, and three other female relatives were also kidnapped but later released.
Shem Tov, 22, and Wenkert, 23, were also taken from the Nova festival.
Wenkert’s family are concerned about his medical condition, as he has not been receiving the necessary treatment for his digestive disease.
Al-Sayed, 36, and Mengistu, 39, have both been held in Gaza long before the October 7 attack.
Al-Sayed, a member of Israel’s Bedouin Arab minority, crossed into Gaza in 2015 and was taken hostage by Hamas. Mengistu, an Israeli of Ethiopian descent, crossed into Gaza in 2014.
If all goes to plan on Saturday, Hamas militants would still be holding around 60 captives, with about half believed to be dead.
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