Hamas and Israel are scheduled to carry out their next swap as part of the Gaza ceasefire on Saturday. Three Israelis, including the father of the youngest hostages, will be exchanged for 90 people currently held in Israeli jails, News.az reports citing foreign media.
After holding them hostage for 15 months, militants in Gaza began releasing captives as the first phase of a ceasefire with Israel took effect on January 19. Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants have so far handed over 15 hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and minors. Israeli campaign group, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, named the captives to be released on Saturday as Yarden Bibas, Keith Siegel, who also has US citizenship, and Ofer Kalderon, who also holds French nationality. The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed it had received the names of the three hostages to be released. In exchange, Israel will free 90 prisoners, nine of whom are serving life sentences, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club advocacy group said. During their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which started the Gaza war, militants abducted Siegel from kibbutz Kfar Aza, and Kalderon and Bibas from kibbutz Nir Oz. Militants took a total of 251 people hostage that day. Of those, 79 remain in Gaza, including at least 34 the military says are dead. Those seized include the wife and two children of Bibas, whom Hamas has declared dead, although Israeli officials have not confirmed that. The two Bibas boys - Kfir, the youngest hostage, whose second birthday fell earlier this month, and his older brother Ariel whose fifth birthday passed in August last year - have become symbols of the suffering of the hostages held in Gaza. The children were taken along with their mother, Shiri. Hamas says the boys and their mother were killed in an Israeli air strike in November 2023. "Our Yarden is supposed to return tomorrow and we are so excited but Shiri and the children still haven't returned," the Bibas family said on Instagram. "We have such mixed emotions and we are facing extremely complex days."
