Israel prepares to receive six more hostages from Hamas

Israel prepares to receive hostages from Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, despite accusations and truce challenges.

Israel prepared on Saturday (February 22, 2025) to receive six more hostages from Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, after accusations over the return of a misidentified body this week threatened to derail a fragile truce.

The six, the last living hostages from a group of 33 due to be freed in the first stage of the ceasefire deal agreed last month, were expected to be handed over at around 8.30 a.m. (12 p.m. IST), according to officials from the militant group Hamas.

Four of the hostages, Eliya Cohen, 27, Tal Shoham, 40, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Omer Wenkert, 23, were seized by Hamas gunmen during their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Another two, Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, and Avera Mengistu, 39, have been held by Hamas since they entered Gaza separately under unexplained circumstances around a decade ago.

In return, Israel is expected to release 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in its jails in the latest stage of an exchange that has held up despite a series of problems that have come close to sinking it on different occasions.

Late on Thursday, Israel accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire by handing over an unidentified body instead of the remains of hostage Shiri Bibas that were due to be returned along with the bodies of her two small sons.

Hamas said her remains appear to have been mixed up with other human remains recovered from the rubble after an Israeli air strike that it said killed her and her two sons in November 2023. On Friday, the group handed over another body, which Israeli forensic officials were preparing to investigate to confirm the identity.

The Bibas family, kidnapped along with their father in the October 7 attack, has been an emblem of the trauma suffered by Israel on that day and the misidentification of the remains of Shiri Bibas, as well as the staged handover of their coffins by Hamas outraged Israelis.