The Islamist group Hamas announced that it has received the list of Palestinian prisoners who will be released this Monday by Israel under an agreement that also provides for the release of 11 hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip.
“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas announces that it has received a list of prisoners who will be released today from the prisons of the Zionist enemy,” the group stated in a message published on Telegram, detailing that they are three women and 30 minors.
Shortly after, the Israeli Armed Forces (IDF) announced that “11 hostages are on their way to Israeli territory, according to information received from the Red Cross.”
Earlier, the director of Egypt’s State Information Service, Diaa Rashwan, indicated in a note that today’s exchange will take place “in the coming hours”, after a series of obstacles have been overcome to implement the exchange.
The note does not provide further information about the obstacles in question, but states that the hostage exchange process will include “11 Israelis in exchange for 33 Palestinians.”
This will be the fourth prisoner exchange after the entry into force, on Friday, of the agreement between Israel and Hamas, which includes a four-day truce and the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
In the first three days since the start of the agreement, 58 hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip and 117 Palestinians who were in Israeli prisons were freed.
This agreement was extended today for two more days, as announced by both the Islamist group and the Qatari Government, one of the mediators along with Egypt and the United States.
The Israeli Prison Service explained that the prisoners who will be released today will be transferred to Ofer prison, near the city of Bethunia, in the West Bank, and from there they will be transferred by the Red Cross to different Israeli military checkpoints.
This mechanism comes after incidents were reported in which several Palestinians who came to witness the liberations were injured by both gunshots from Israeli security forces and tear gas used to disperse them.
Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7, following an attack by the Islamic group, which included the launching of more than four thousand rockets and the infiltration of nearly 3,000 militants, who killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 240 in Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.
Since then, Israel’s air, naval and ground forces have counterattacked in the Palestinian enclave, where more than 15,000 people have died, according to authorities in the Gaza Strip, controlled since 2007 by Hamas, most of them children and women. and it is estimated that more than seven thousand people are missing under the rubble.
Source: TSF
