Hamas on Tuesday said that it will release the dead bodies of four Israeli hostages on Thursday, including the two youngest people held by the group, Kfir and Ariel Bibas. <\/p>\n
The group will also release six living hostages on Saturday, instead of the three that had been expected, Khalil Al-Hayya, head of the group\u2019s negotiating team, said in a statement. <\/p>\n
The Israeli Prime Minister\u2019s Office confirmed on Tuesday that an agreement had been reached during negotiations in Cairo for \u201cfour slain hostages\u201d to be handed over on Thursday and \u201csix living hostages\u201d to be released on Saturday. <\/p>\n
It added that \u201cfour additional slain hostages are expected to be handed over to Israel next week.\u201d <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Israeli Hostage Families Forum said that the families of all the hostages set for release, dead and alive, have been notified. <\/p>\n
Israel is expected to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israelis, as in past weeks. <\/p>\n
It is clearest indication that the Bibas children \u2013 who were just nine months and four years old, respectively, when they were kidnapped in October 2023 \u2013 are indeed dead. <\/p>\n
Israel has not yet confirmed their deaths and has not yet commented on Hamas\u2019 announcement. <\/p>\n
Hamas claimed in November 2023 that Kfir and Ariel Bibas were killed along with their mother in an Israeli airstrike, and released a video of their father Yarden, who was also held hostage, in which he blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their deaths. <\/p>\n
An Israeli military spokesperson at the time called the video \u201cpsychological terror,\u201d but the military has told relatives that they may not be alive, according to a spokesperson for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. <\/p>\n
Hamas released Yarden Bibas, alive, on February 1. <\/p>\n
The Bibas family, and Kfir in particular, have become one of the most recognizable victims of the October 7 terror attacks. <\/p>\n
Kfir\u2019s picture has been featured on many of the posters calling for the release of the hostages that have been on display across Israel and the world for the past 15 months. In it, the red-haired baby boy is holding a pink elephant toy, looking directly into the camera with a toothless smile. <\/p>\n
Hamas\u2019 announcement came on the day Israel said it would begin talks on the second phase of the Gaza hostage-ceasefire agreement. <\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said negotiations could begin \u201cthis week\u201d following discussions with \u201cour American friends\u201d. <\/p>\n
He committed to aiming to reach an agreement by the 42nd day of the truce, as stipulated in the original deal, and said the possibility of a longer-term agreement was an \u201coption\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Hamas on Tuesday said that it will release the dead bodies of four Israeli hostages on Thursday, including the two youngest people held by the group, Kfir and Ariel Bibas. The group will also release six living hostages on Saturday, instead of the three that had been expected, Khalil Al-Hayya, head of the group\u2019s negotiating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}