Israel-Hamas war: Israel releases 39 Palestinian prisoners after Hamas hands over 17 hostages

Hamas freed 17 hostages held in Gaza, including a four-year-old American girl, while Israel released 39 Palestinian prisoners on Sunday, the third day of their truce.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had successfully transferred 17 hostages from Gaza. Hamas said it had handed over 13 Israelis, three Thais and one with Russian citizenship.

The release of the hostages - part of a larger group captured when Hamas fighters rampaged through southern Israel on October 7th - was mirrored by the freeing of 39 Palestinians, all of whom are teenagers, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Hamas said it wanted to extend the truce if serious efforts were made to increase the number of Palestinian detainees released by Israel.

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US President Joe Biden said he hoped the pause in fighting can go on as long as hostages are getting released. He hoped more Americans would be released by Hamas although he did not have firm news.

Biden said the four-year-old hostage, Abigail Edan, had witnessed her parents being killed by Hamas fighters during their October 7th raid into Israel and had been held since then.

“What she endured is unthinkable,” Biden said at a news conference in the US.

Abigail was on her way to the hospital for checks, Israel’s Channel 13 said. Her grandfather, Carmel Edan, told Reuters he “simply could not believe” she had been returned, thanking Biden “for all the help he’s offered us.”

Palestinians gave the freed prisoners a jubilant reception in Ramallah, according to WAFA.

Omar Abdullah Al Hajj, 17, one of the detainees released on Sunday, said he’d been kept in the dark about what was happening in the outside world.

“I can’t believe I’m free now but my joy is incomplete because we still have our brothers who remain in prison, and then there is all the news about Gaza that I am having to learn about now,” he said.

The four-day truce is the first halt in fighting in the seven weeks since Hamas killed 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages back into Gaza.

In response to that attack, Israel has vowed to destroy the Hamas militants who run Gaza, bombarding the enclave and mounting a ground offensive in the north. Some 14,800 Palestinians have been killed, Gaza health authorities say, and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday met security forces inside the Gaza Strip. He also said he spoke to Biden about the hostage release, adding that he would welcome extending a temporary truce if it meant that on every additional day 10 captives would be freed.

However, Netanyahu said he also told Biden that, at the end of the truce, “we will return with full force to achieve our goals: The elimination of Hamas, ensuring that Gaza does not return to what it was; and of course the release of all our hostages.”

Sunday’s hostage release follows the liberation of 13 Israelis on Saturday - six of them women and seven of them teenagers or children. The youngest was three-year-old Yahel Shoham, freed with her mother and brother, although her father remains a hostage.

Israel freed 39 Palestinians the same day - six women and 33 teenagers - from two prisons, WAFA said. – Reuters