Dozens of masked Hamas fighters paraded three of the hostages through a jeering crowd in Gaza, just days after misidentifying a body returned to Israel.
Terror group Hamas is freeing six more hostages to Israel in exchange for the release of hundreds more Palestinian prisoners.
Dozens of masked Hamas fighters paraded three of the hostages through a jeering crowd in Gaza, the latest in a series of similar grim spectacles that have become commonplace during the group’s prisoner exchanges with Jerusalem.
Hisham Al-Sayed, Eliya Cohen, Avera Mengistu, Omer Shem Tov, Tal Shoham, and Omer Wenkert were handed over to humanitarian workers to be transferred to Israeli forces on Feb. 22.
Cohen, Shem Tov, and Wenkert, who appeared pale and malnourished as Hamas fighters led them through the crowd, were all seized initially from the Nova music festival during Hamas’s terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
More than 360 people were killed at that site, with dozens more taken hostage.
Shoham was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri, where more than 100 Israelis were murdered. His wife and two children were also abducted but later freed during a brief truce in November 2023.
Al-Sayed and Mengistu, meanwhile, have both been held by Hamas for more than a decade after having entered Gaza of their own accord in separate incidents.
The six are the last living hostages from a group of 33 that are slated to be freed in the first stage of Israel and Hamas’s current cease-fire deal. Around 60 more captives, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, remain in Gaza.
In exchange for the hostages, Israel is expected to release 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from its jails, dozens of whom have been convicted of serious crimes, including plotting deadly terror attacks on Israelis.
This exchange was nearly derailed when, earlier in the week, Hamas delivered a body to Israel that it said belonged to the hostage Shiri Bibas but was later found to be the body of another victim.
Bibas, her husband, and their two young sons were all abducted during the Oct. 7 attacks.
The Bibas family has been an emblem of the trauma suffered by Israel on that day. Hamas’s misidentification of Bibas’s remains, as well as its staged handover of the coffins of her two young sons, outraged Israelis.
