Hamas give gift bags, captivity certificate to freed hostages

KHAN Yunis, Palestinian Territories (AFP) — Masked Hamas militants handed over three Israeli hostages to the Red Cross in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis on Saturday, in the sixth hostage-prisoner swap under its ceasefire agreement with Israel, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist reported.

Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov and Israeli-Argentinian Yair Horn were paraded on a stage and told to address the crowd before their handover to the Red Cross.

Clutching gift bags given by their captors and a certificate to mark the end of their captivity, the three men, flanked by fighters, called for the completion of further hostage exchanges under the ceasefire deal.

The three have been held by Gaza militants since Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.

Israel’s military inside Gaza took custody of the freed hostages later and subsequently brought them home, reuniting with their families, according to AFP.

A bus carrying Palestinian prisoners left the Israeli Ofer prison and arrived in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, an AFP journalist reported.

Buses carrying hundreds of Palestinian prisoners freed under the Gaza ceasefire deal left a jail in Israel’s Negev desert heading to the Gaza Strip on Saturday, another AFP journalist reported.

On Saturday morning, dozens of masked Hamas fighters lined up in the main southern city of Khan Yunis around a stage bearing the logo of the group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.

Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad said the groups had deployed about 200 militants for the handover ceremony.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said that from the 369 Palestinian inmates to be freed, 24 are expected to be deported.

The vast majority, 333 people, are “prisoners from the Gaza Strip who were arrested after October 7,” the group said.

After the crisis that appeared to bring the truce to a breaking point, Hamas said on Friday it expected talks on a second phase of the ceasefire to begin early next week.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose country is Israel’s top backer and one of the truce mediators, is due to arrive in Israel late Saturday ahead of expected talks with Netanyahu on the Gaza truce.

Last week’s release sparked anger in Israel and beyond after the freed hostages were paraded onstage, with their emaciated state sparking concern over conditions in captivity.

Israeli-American hostage Keith Siegel, who was released in a previous exchange, said he was “starved and... tortured, both physically and emotionally” during his captivity.

There were also fears for Palestinians in Israeli custody after some prisoners required medical treatment after their release in the last swap.