Live Briefing: Hamas names hostages it will release Saturday, including American citizen
The Palestinian militant group Hamas on Friday published the names of three hostages held in the Gaza Strip that it said it would release Saturday as part of a ceasefire deal with Israel, including an American citizen.
Israel confirmed it had received three names from Qatari and Egyptian mediators. They included Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, the American hostage, Sasha Alexander Troufanov, 29, who holds Russian and Israeli citizenship, and Iair Horn, 46, who was born in Argentina. All three were residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where they were taken by Hamas fighters during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
The Hamas-run Prisoners Media Office said that Israel, in exchange for the hostages, was expected to release 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Israel did not immediately disclose how many Palestinians would be released.
The announcements appeared to resolve a dispute between Hamas and Israel that had imperiled the ceasefire. Hamas said Monday that it would delay Saturday's hostages releases over alleged Israeli ceasefire violations. President Donald Trump then warned that 'all hell is going to break out' if Hamas did not free hostages by Saturday, in threats echoed by Israeli officials.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered troops to mass inside and around Gaza.
Dekel-Chen had been working in the kibbutz machine shop to convert airport buses into mobile classrooms when the attack began, according to his family. His wife, Avital, who was seven months pregnant, survived by hiding in a safe room for nine hours with their two young daughters. Two months later, she gave birth to their third daughter, who has yet to meet her father.
Dekel-Chen's release would leave one remaining American hostage in Gaza.
Troufanov was also a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz. He was taken by Hamas fighters along with his mother, Elena, grandmother Irina Tati, and girlfriend, Sapir Cohen. His father, Vitaly, was killed in the attack.
Horn, who is known for organizing Purim parties and managing the kibbutz pub, was taken alongside his brother Eitan, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
The Israeli Prime Minister's Office, in confirming the list of names, declined to say whether the number of hostages being released was sufficient.
TEL AVIV — The signs of extreme malnutrition evinced by some of the recently released Israeli hostages were only the most visible evidence of the torture they recall enduring in Hamas captivity.
The 16 Israeli hostages freed in recent weeks after being held in Gazan tunnels and homes for more than a year have begun to provide accounts to their families of being beaten, chained, burned and violently interrogated, according to relatives. Former hostages said their captors tormented them by boasting that Israel no longer existed and taunted them about the fate of family members, who in many cases were killed or abducted during the Hamas-led assault on Israel 16 months ago.
The psychological torment continued into the very last moments before their release, as Hamas forced the hostages to praise their captors in their holding cells and then smile for cameras during staged ceremonies that preceded their journey home.
'Hamas was trying to show us that they still have a certain level of control over what's going on,' said Lee Siegel, the brother of Keith Siegel, a 65-year-old American Israeli hostage who was released earlier this month and given two departing 'goody bags,' one for him and one stuffed with chocolate, perfume and a 'captivity certificate' for Aviva, his wife, who alongside him had been dragged from their home in southern Israel and released during the first hostage deal, in November 2023.
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