Militant group due to release a further four hostages on Saturday as part of exchange for 600 Palestinian prisoners

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Hamas says six captives to be freed from Gaza in swap for about 600 Palestinian prisoners and detaineesA masked militant has sat down at a table on the stage with a Red Cross representative and they appear to be signing documents.Live images from Rafah are showing masked Hamas fighters taking to the makeshift stage, with one speaking into a microphone. Continue reading...

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Hamas says six captives to be freed from Gaza in swap for about 600 Palestinian prisoners and detaineesA masked militant has sat down at a table on the stage with a Red Cross representative and they appear to be signing documents.Live images from Rafah are showing masked Hamas fighters taking to the makeshift stage, with one speaking into a microphone. Continue reading...

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As preparations moved forward, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed revenge for 'a cruel and malicious violation' of the agreement centered on the wrong identification released by militants

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Hamas says six captives expected to be freed from Gaza on Saturday in swap for about 600 Palestinian prisoners and detaineesA convoy of Red Cross vehicles is now heading to a hostage handover site set up by Hamas in Rafah in southern Gaza, the Times of Israel is quoting an Israeli defense official as saying.The Red Cross is expected to receive two hostages there, the report says. According to Al Jazeera, hostages Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu will be freed in Rafah. The other four — Omer Shem-Tov, Eliya Cohen, Omer Wenkert and Hisham al-Sayed — will be released later in central Gaza’s Nuseirat.On the stage prepared by Hamas in Rafah are the usual placards with messages including “We are the flood” as well as military weapons and equipment the group claims were stolen from the IDF on October 7 2023.One piece is a gun on which the group wrote “Ravshatz,” the Hebrew acronym for the head of a community’s local security team, indicating it was taken from such an individual killed by terr...

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Gaza ceasefire deal still on track amid uproar over fate of two Israeli boys and initial false return of their mother’s bodyThe body of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has been identified, Israel’s army radio reported early on Saturday, adding that Bibas was likely killed in captivity with her children.The confirmation came as Israelis and Palestinians braced for another tense exchange of hostages, prisoners and detainees on Saturday after uproar in Israel over allegations that two child hostages were “brutally murdered” by Hamas, and the group’s initial failure to deliver the body of their mother, instead returning the corpse of an unidentified woman. Continue reading...

Politics

Israel has blamed Hamas for murdering siblings Ariel an Kfir Bibas 'with their bare hands' after the terrorist group handed over their bodies.

Events

As Donald Trump persists with a monstrous proposal to remove Palestinians, the immediate need is to prevent fresh conflictThe pain and damage wreaked in the last 16 months will reverberate through families, communities and the Middle East for decades to come. On Thursday, the bodies of two young children and their mother, and that of an 83-year-old peace activist, were returned to Israel by Hamas. They were kidnapped in the 7 October 2023 raid in which the militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and others. Around 48,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war in response.It was always feared that the ceasefire deal, which has brought desperately needed respite for Palestinians in Gaza and the return of Israeli and foreign hostages, would be fleeting. The six-week opening stage is due to expire on 1 March. The talks on the more complicated second stage have yet to begin, more than a fortnight after the...

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Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu said ‘heart of the entire nation is torn’ as bodies of four hostages returned

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Bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, who Hamas says were killed in an Israeli airstrike, as well as Oded Lifshitz, 83, to be handed overAhead of today’s release, Hamas said it is ready to release all its remaining hostages in a single exchange if the ceasefire agreement with Israel moves forward to a second phase next month.The offer came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, signalled his readiness to talk about a second phase of the Gaza ceasefire after an extended delay, by appointing one of his closest advisers, Ron Dermer, a US-born cabinet minister and former ambassador to Washington, to lead the Israeli delegation to the talks.Hamas has said it is ready to release all its remaining hostages in a single exchange if the ceasefire agreement with Israel moves forward to a second phase next month. A senior Hamas official, Taher al-Nunu, told Agence France-Presse “We have informed the mediators that Hamas is ready to release all hostages in one b...

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Hamas is set to return the bodies of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children who have long been feared dead and had come to embody the nation’s agony following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack

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Eli Sharabi learned his wife and daughters had been killed after his release from captivity in Gaza but is ‘mentally strong’, says British brother-in-law“Don’t worry, I will be back. Whatever they do to me, I will be back,” was one of the last things Eli Sharabi told his wife and daughters before he was abducted by Hamas. And when the 52-year-old was freed after 16 months in captivity in Gaza, he was desperate to know if his family were waiting for him.It was only then that he was told that his British wife, Lianne Sharabi, 48, and daughters Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, had been murdered at their home in the Be’eri kibbutz in Israel on 7 October 2023. Continue reading...

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Militant group will release hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners as Israel confirms it will begin negotiations on second phase of ceasefire dealGeneva Abdul is a reporter for the GuardianMore than 200 organisations worldwide have called on nations involved in producing F-35 fighter jets to “immediately halt all arms transfers to Israel” amid fears they have failed to prevent the planes from being used to violate international law. Continue reading...

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