Hamas, Israel Complete Sixth Hostage-Prisoner Swap Under Gaza Truce
Palestinian militants released three Israeli hostages on Saturday in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian inmates freed by Israel, completing the latest swap despite fears the Gaza truce deal was near collapse.
An AFP journalist saw masked Hamas gunmen parade the hostages onto a stage in front of a crowd in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis, where they were made to make statements into a microphone before being handed over to the Red Cross and taken back to Israeli territory.
Clutching gift bags given by their captors and certificates 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.
Not long after, a busload of Palestinian prisoners departed Israel’s Ofer Prison and was greeted by a cheering crowd in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, an AFP journalist said.
More buses took inmates from an Israeli prison in the Negev desert to the Gaza Strip, according to another AFP journalist.
Saturday’s swap, the sixth since the truce took effect on January 19, came after Hamas had threatened to pause hostage releases over alleged Israeli violations, while Israel had threatened to resume the war if it did.
The three hostages — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn — had been held by Gaza militants since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war 16 months ago.
Friends and family members of the hostages shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones on Saturday.
“Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” Trupanov’s family said in a statement.
Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, said in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster: “My breath has returned. He looks so handsome.”
Next phase
Later in the day, hundreds of Palestinians freed by Israel reached Khan Yunis, where they threw up victory signs and waved to a jubilant crowd, an AFP reporter said.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group, Israel was to release 333 Gazans who were taken into custody during the war, as well as 36 prisoners serving life sentences, 24 of whom were due for deportation under the terms of the truce deal.
Israel confirmed it had released a total of 369 prisoners.
Images broadcast on Israeli media showed Palestinian prisoners ahead of their release wearing sweatshirts featuring the prison service logo, a Star of David, and the slogan: “We will not forget and we will not forgive.”
After the deal had appeared to be on the brink of collapse, a Hamas official on Friday said the group expected talks on a second phase of the ceasefire to begin early next week. Another source familiar with the talks offered a similar timeline.
The negotiations on the second phase are meant to lay out steps towards a more permanent end to the war.
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 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the truce.
An Israeli campaign group, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, warned in a statement against the “collapse” of the ongoing agreement, calling on the parties to “continue to use this momentum to make a swift and responsible agreement for everyone” still held in Gaza.
