(22 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tel Aviv, Israel – 22 February 2025
1. Various of crowd in Hostages Square cheering and clapping as they watch handover of hostages on big screen, man holding sign reading (Hebrew: "Sorry, welcome back"
STORYLINE:
Crowds gathered in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square cheered and clapped on Saturday as they watched the handover of the first two hostages set to be released from captivity in the Gaza Strip.
The two hostages — Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 39 — were put into Red Cross ambulances after being brought out onto a stage by masked and armed Hamas fighters in front of a crowd in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Soon after, the Israeli military confirmed that the two had been brought into Israel.
The latest hostage release, along with the freeing of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, is going ahead after tensions mounted over a grisly and heart-wrenching dispute triggered this week when Hamas initially handed over the wrong body for Shiri Bibas, an Israeli mother of two young boys abducted by militants.
The six hostages being freed Saturday are the last living ones to be released under the ceasefire’s first phase.
Mengistu, an Ethiopian-Israeli, had been held in Gaza since entering on his own in 2014.
Watching the handover on Israeli media, Mengistu’s family broke out into a Hebrew song, “Here is the Light,” as they saw him for the first time in more than a decade.
Shoham, from the northern Israeli village of Ma’ale Tzviya, was visiting his wife’s family in Kibbutz Be’eri when Hamas militants stormed into the community during the October 7, 2023 attacks.
The others to be freed include Eliya Cohen, 27; Omer Shem Tov, 22; and Omer Wenkert, 23.
All three were abducted from a music festival during the October 7 attack.
Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, who also crossed into Gaza on his own years ago, is also to be returned to Israel as part of the deal.
More than 600 Palestinians jailed in Israel will be freed in exchange, the Palestinian prisoners media office said Friday.
The prisoners set for release include 50 serving life sentences, 60 with long sentences, 47 who were released under a previous hostage-for-prisoner exchange and 445 prisoners from Gaza arrested since the war began.
Hamas has said it will also release four more bodies next week, completing the first phase of the ceasefire.
If that plan is carried out, Hamas would retain about 60 hostages, about half of whom are believed to be alive.
Hamas has said it won’t release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the full backing of the Trump administration, says he’s committed to destroying Hamas’ military and governing capacities and returning all the hostages, goals widely seen as mutually exclusive.
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