Middle East crisis live: Hamas releases five more hostages as Israel says it has now also received body of Shiri Bibas | Israel-Gaza war


Hamas hands over Israeli hostages Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu to Red Cross

The two hostages in Rafah have been handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross and driven away in its vehicles.

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Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert handed over to ICRC in Nuseirat

Three more Israeli hostages have been released in Gaza by Hamas. Live TV footage showed three men led on to a stage in Nuseirat in central Gaza by armed militants.

Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert were seen waving on stage in front of Hamas propaganda, reports the Times of Israel.

Omer Shem Tov, Eliya Cohen and Omer Wenkert, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, in this still image taken from a video. Photograph: Reuters TV/Reuters
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Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires:

International Red Cross vehicles wait for Israeli hostages to be handed over by Hamas in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip. Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
People watch the release of Israeli hostages on a big screen at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Saturday. Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA
A helicopter transports Israeli hostages who were released on Saturday, in Reim, Israel. Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters
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Live TV footage shows officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) making their way to the stage in Nuseirat in central Gaza, as they prepare to sign paperwork before the latest handover of hostages by Hamas.

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The Times of Israel reports that three hostages will be handed over to the Red Cross in Nuseirat soon. They are: Omer Shem Tov, Eliya Cohen and Omer Wenkert.

Another hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, will be will be handed over to the Red Cross at a third site, in Gaza City, reports the publication, citing an Israeli defence official.

Al Jazeera reports that al-Sayed will be released without a ceremony.

The Guardian have been unable to independently verify the reports.

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Away from Gaza and Israel for a moment. Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will travel to Lebanon for the funeral of longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports, citing Iranian media.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out in Beirut for the funeral, according to AFP.

An Israeli airstrike killed Nasrallah on 27 September last year at the start of an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel after roughly a year of lower-level conflict. The massive airstrike on Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold also killed Abbas Nilforoushan, a senior commander in Iran’s al-Quds force – the foreign operations arm of its Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Ghalibaf “along with a number of parliamentarians and state officials will leave on Sunday for Lebanon to attend Nasrallah’s funeral”, member of parliament Alireza Salimi told the official IRNA news agency on Saturday. On Friday evening, the Fars news agency reported that foreign minister Abbas Araghchi would also attend the ceremony.

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ICRC vehicles arrive in Nuseirat for next hostage handover by Hamas

Live footage has shown International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) vehicles arriving at a second site for Saturday’s hostages handover, reports Reuters. The ICRC vehicles are in central Gaza’s Nuseirat.

More details soon …

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The family of Avera Mengistu, who was freed on Saturday by Hamas militants in a ceremony in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, said they had endured over a decade of “unimaginable suffering” during his captivity, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Our family has endured 10 years and five months of unimaginable suffering”, they said in a statement, adding that “we gather in anxious anticipation of the return of our beloved son, brother and uncle Avera”.

Israeli hostage Avera Mengistu is escorted by Hamas militants before being handed over to the Red Cross in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP

Mengistu had been held by Hamas since entering Gaza under unexplained circumstances around a decade ago.

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Bethan McKernan

Bethan McKernan

The body of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has been identified, Israel’s army radio reported early on Saturday, adding that Bibas was likely killed in captivity with her children.

The confirmation came as Israelis and Palestinians braced for another tense exchange of hostages, prisoners and detainees on Saturday after uproar in Israel over allegations that two child hostages were “brutally murdered” by Hamas, and the group’s initial failure to deliver the body of their mother, instead returning the corpse of an unidentified woman.

The remains of the Bibas children, 85-year-old Oded Lifshitz and a fourth person who was supposed to be Shiri Bibas were handed over to Israel on Thursday as part of the first stage of a fragile Gaza ceasefire agreement.

After the Israeli military said DNA testing showed the woman’s body released was not Shiri Bibas or any other hostage, Hamas claimed Shiri’s body had been “mistakenly mixed” with others who were killed and buried under the rubble in Gaza.

Hamas on Friday released another body to the Red Cross. In a statement on Saturday, the Bibas family said: “After the identification process at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, this morning we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest.”

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on Friday afternoon that autopsy results and military intelligence concluded that members of Hamas “used their bare hands” to kill Ariel Bibas, four, and his 10-month-old brother, Kfir, when they were seized in October 2023.

“Their father, [the recently released hostage] Yarden Bibas, looked me in the eyes and asked that the whole world know and be shocked by the way they murdered his children,” the military spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said in a video address.

In Israel and around the world, the fate of the Bibas family has come to embody the trauma of the Hamas attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

Hamas said early in the conflict that the boys and their mother, Shiri, 32, were killed in an Israeli bombing in November 2023. There was no immediate comment from the militant group on the IDF’s allegation of murder.

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Hamas has handed over to the Red Cross the first two of six Israeli hostages due to be freed on Saturday under the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

The two hostages – Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 39 – have crossed into Israel, according to Isaeli security sources, reports Reuters.

Israelis react while watching a live broadcast in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv as the first two of six hostages to be released in Gaza by Hamas on Saturday are handed over to the Red Cross . Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP
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The Israeli military said the two hostages freed by Hamas militants on Saturday were now in its custody in the Gaza Strip, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Earlier, Tal Shoham and Averu Mengistu were handed over to officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on stage in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

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Hamas says ready to move to second phase of ceasefire deal

According to Reuters, Hamas said on Saturday it was ready to move to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal and to carry out a comprehensive hostage-prisoner exchange to achieve a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces.

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Hostages Avera Mengistu, third right, and Tal Shoham, third left, on the stage in Rafah before their handover to Red Cross officials. Photograph: Reuters TV/Reuters
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Hamas hands over Israeli hostages Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu to Red Cross

The two hostages in Rafah have been handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross and driven away in its vehicles.

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Tal Shoham with Hamas gunmen on the stage in Rafah.

Photograph: Reuters TV/Reuters
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Militants have led two people on to the stage in Rafah, with reports suggesting they are Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu. They are standing holding apparent certificates and flanked by masked gunmen.

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