Three More Israeli Hostages Released by Hamas

Three more Israeli hostages were released by armed Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, marking the sixth exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners since the start of the ceasefire agreement.

Hamas spokesperson Abdul Latif al-Qanoua told the Anadolu news agency on Thursday that the group would release captives on Saturday if Israel adheres to the terms of the ceasefire.

“The [Israeli] occupation has violated the agreement multiple times, whether by preventing the return of displaced people or blocking the entry of humanitarian aid,” he said. “If Israel does not adhere to the terms of the agreement, the prisoner exchange process will not take place.”

Nevertheless, the three hostages were released as scheduled, after nearly 500 days of being held captive by the militant group.

The three men were forced to say a few words through a microphone to the crowd that had gathered there. They were then handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross to be transferred to the Israeli army.

In exchange for the three hostages, Israel must release 369 Palestinian prisoners.

After almost 500 days

The three hostages were Russian-Israeli Sasha Trufanov, 29, American-Israeli Shagi Dekel-Hen, 36, and Argentine-Israeli Yair Horn, 46. They were initially taken to a platform set up in Khan Yunis, surrounded by armed, masked fighters from Hamas and its ally, Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli hostages are now in Israel, the IDF announced. Trufanov, Dekel-Hen and Horn “crossed the border into Israeli territory” and are moving to the point where they will meet their family members, the Israeli army said in a brief statement.

The three men were kidnapped in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the unprecedented violence of the attack launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The attack sparked the war in the Palestinian enclave.

Trufanov was kidnapped along with his mother, grandmother and girlfriend—all of whom were released during the brief ceasefire in November 2023. His father was killed in the attack on Nir Oz, one of the hardest-hit communities, where one in four people either died or was kidnapped.

In Tel Aviv, in the so-called Hostages Square, the gathered crowd burst into cheers and tears when they heard that the Red Cross was on its way to hand over the hostages to Israeli forces in Gaza. The crowd seemed relieved to see that the three men were in better condition than the three Israelis released last week, who appeared emaciated and weak.

As in every hostage release, dozens of armed Hamas fighters, with their faces covered, were deployed this morning around a platform, this time in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Some Hamas fighters were carrying weapons seized from the Israeli army in the October 7, 2023 attack, according to Hamas sources.

A large poster at the site with the emblem of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, displayed several political slogans in Arabic, English and Hebrew, including “No relocation, except to Jerusalem,” in a reference to the Palestinians’ rejection of the US plan to relocate them out of Gaza.