All identified
Hamas handed over bodies of dead hostages to Israel
The terrorist militia Hamas has handed over the bodies of four Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip to representatives of the Red Cross. As demanded by the Israeli government, this time the handover was not staged as a macabre spectacle with armed Hamas fighters and loud music as the coffins were handed over.
"It is with deep sadness that we received the news of the identification of Shlomo Mantzur, Tsachi Idan, Itzhak Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi," it was announced on Thursday. They were abducted on October 7, 2023 during the Hamas attack on Israel. Recently, there had been confusion about another hostage's body.
This means that all 33 hostages - 25 alive and eight dead - are back in Israel, which Hamas had promised to return during the first phase of the current ceasefire agreement. According to the Relatives Forum, 59 hostages are still being held in the Gaza Strip. However, it is assumed that only 27 are still alive.
Talks on ceasefire continue
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed a delegation from his country to make its way to Cairo. It is to continue talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, according to Netanyahu's office. However, according to reports, the two sides have not yet seriously negotiated this second phase.
In this second phase, all hostages are to be returned and Israel must completely withdraw its troops from the coastal strip. The war is to be ended permanently, but the far-right coalition partners of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reject this. They are calling for the war to continue until Hamas has been completely destroyed.
Netanyahu's office: Three hostages murdered in captivity
Prime Minister Netanyahu's office said of the bodies handed over on Wednesday evening that Yahalomi, Idan and Elgarat "were murdered during their captivity in Gaza" on the basis of "the information and findings available to us". The fourth body returned that night was identified as Shlomo Mantzur. Israel had announced on February 11 that 86-year-old Mantzur had been killed in the attack on October 7, 2023 and that his body had been taken to the Gaza Strip.
The Forum of Hostage Families also confirmed the identity of all four hostages in a statement. "We received the news of the identification of Shlomo Mantzur, Tsachi Idan, Itzhak Elgarat and Ohad Yahalomi (...), who were laid to eternal rest in Israel, with deep sadness," it said. Yahalomi had both an Israeli passport and French citizenship, while Elgarat was an Israeli-Danish citizen.
596 Palestinians released from prison
In return for the handover of the dead hostages, 596 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons during the night, according to Palestinian sources. A further 46 are now to follow. In total, Israel was to release 1904 Palestinians in the first phase.
Hamas emphasized in a statement that further hostages would only be released if Israel adhered to the ceasefire agreement and entered into talks on the second phase of the agreement via mediators.
The prisoners - including 50 with life sentences - were originally supposed to have been released on Saturday last week in exchange for six Israeli hostages. However, out of anger at the degrading Hamas ceremonies at previous handovers of live and dead hostages, Israel's government put a stop to this and suspended the releases for the time being.
Forced kisses to Hamas terrorists during handovers
Hamas has always used the release of hostages as a show of force and turned the fate of people held captive for many months under cruel conditions into a spectacle for onlookers. The abductees were often paraded on a stage and given visible instructions by armed Islamists to smile and wave to the waiting crowd. Last weekend, an Israeli had to kiss two masked Hamas men on the forehead.
Here, a hostage is instructed to kiss two of his tormentors on the forehead:
The procedure for the handover of four dead hostages last Thursday - including two young children who are also German nationals - also met with international outrage. Hamas had laid out the coffins on a stage while numerous cheering onlookers and dozens of masked Islamists gathered at the site of the handover and loud music was played.
Now 59 hostages in the Gaza Strip
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented massacre on October 7, 2023, in which Hamas terrorists and other Islamists killed around 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 others from Israel to the Gaza Strip. Since then, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority in the Gaza Strip, more than 48,300 people have been killed, including many women and minors. The figures make no distinction between combatants and civilians and cannot be independently confirmed, but are considered quite credible by the United Nations.
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