Gaza militants have released three Israeli hostages in exchange for 369 Palestinians in Israeli custody, the sixth swap in a truce that came close to collapsing this week.
Israel and Hamas have traded accusations of violating the 19 January ceasefire, with the Palestinian group saying it would pause releases and Israel threatening the resumption of war in the Gaza Strip.
But on Friday both sides signalled that the hostage release scheduled for Saturday would go ahead.
On Saturday morning, dozens of Hamas fighters lined up in the southern city of Khan Younis around a stage bearing the logo of the group’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad said the groups had deployed about 200 militants for the handover ceremony.
The office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, named the hostages due for release as Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, Israeli-Russian Sasha Troufanov and Israeli-Argentinian Iair Horn. They have been held by Gaza militants since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel was to release 369 prisoners and detainees in exchange, with 24 of them expected to be deported.
The vast majority, 333 people, were “prisoners from the Gaza Strip who were arrested after 7 October”, the group said.
After the crisis that appeared to bring the truce to a breaking point, Hamas said on Friday it expected talks on a second phase of the ceasefire to begin early next week.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, whose country is Israel’s top backer and one of the truce mediators, is due to arrive in Israel late on Saturday before expected talks with Netanyahu on the truce.
Last week’s release caused anger in Israel and beyond after the freed hostages were paraded onstage by Hamas, with their emaciated state raising concerns over conditions in captivity.
There were also fears for Palestinians in Israeli custody after some prisoners required medical treatment following their release in the last swap.
The ceasefire has been under strain since the US president, Donald Trump, proposed a takeover of the Gaza Strip under which the territory’s population of more than 2 million people would be moved to Egypt or Jordan.
The stage set up for the hostage release on Saturday bore an illustrated poster appearing to depict the final moments of Hamas’s former leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces in October.
The poster showed al-Aqsa mosque visible through a hole in the wall of a destroyed building along with the slogan: “No displacement except to Jerusalem.”
Arab countries have come together to reject Trump’s proposal, and Saudi Arabia will host the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday for a summit on the issue.
After the Riyadh summit, the Arab League will convene in Cairo on 27 February to discuss the same issue.
Trump had warned this week that “hell” would break loose if Hamas failed to release “all” remaining hostages by midday on Saturday.
Israel later insisted Hamas release “three living hostages” on Saturday or “the ceasefire will end”.
The defence minister, Israel Katz, said if fighting resumed it would not just lead to the “defeat of Hamas and the release of all the hostages” – Israel’s stated objectives since the start of the war – but also “allow the realisation of US President Trump’s vision for Gaza”.
Under the terms of the 42-day first phase of the ceasefire brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the US, negotiations for a second phase had been due to start on 3 February.
Netanyahu sent negotiators to Doha days later, but the delegation was not mandated to discuss phase two, which is meant to lay out steps towards ending the war.
