Jerusalem:

Four men held hostage in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and two others held for around 10 years are expected to be freed Saturday under the Israel-Hamas truce, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

Since the entry into force of the January 19 ceasefire, 19 Israeli and dual national hostages have been freed, as have five Thai hostages released outside the accord.

Under the first phase of the accord 33 hostages, of whom eight have been announced as dead, are due to be exchanged by early March in return for the release of around 1,900 Palestinians detained by Israel.

As well as the six due for release on Saturday, the bodies of four dead captives are to be repatriated on Thursday.

The six scheduled to be freed on Saturday are:

– Eliya Cohen, 27 –

Originally from Tzur Hadassah near Jerusalem, Eliya Cohen, now 27, attended the Nova music festival with his fiancee, Ziv Aboud, who survived the October 7 attack.

Cohen worked in marketing and real estate, and was captured with three other young men as they hid in a shelter on the edge of the Gaza Strip.

Aboud said she had heard Cohen shout that he had been hit before he was abducted.

– Omer Shem Tov, 22 –

Omer Shem Tov, a computer programmer who turned 22 in captivity, was also at the Nova music festival along the border when Hamas attacked.

In regular contact with his parents, he “seemed to be more in a panic as the calls went on”, according to a video statement from his father Malki Shem Tov. They lost contact when he was taken to Gaza. A video posted by Hamas on Telegram confirmed he was in Gaza, his parents identifying him thanks to his tattoos.

Shem Tov, who is asthmatic, lived in Herzliya north of Tel Aviv before his capture.

– Tal Shoham, 40 –

The Israeli-Austrian dual national turned 40 in late January. He was kidnapped with his wife and extended family in Beeri kibbutz where they had been visiting relatives.

The software developer and volunteer first-aider is the only member of the family still held — six others were freed during the first truce in November 2023.

Three members of Shoham’s family died in the October 7, 2023 attack.

– Omer Wenkert, 23 –

The eldest of four children, Omer Wenkert, an Israeli-Argentinian who turned 23 in captivity, attended the Nova festival with his friend Kim Damati, who was killed in the attack.

Wenkert had worked as a restaurant manager and friends described him as “joyful with a contagious energy”, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

He suffers from a chronic illness, and the last proof he was alive was given by a hostage freed in the November 2023 truce.

Wenkert’s last message to his mother before being kidnapped was: “I am scared to death”.

– Hisham al-Sayed, 37 –

Hisham al-Sayed, a Bedouin of Israeli nationality with psycho-social disabilities, is believed to have been held in Gaza since he entered the territory of his own accord in 2015.

A hostage for nearly 10 years, he turned 37 on February 15.

He had been missing for a year when in April 2016 his photo appeared on Hamas television. Human Rights Watch then reported that he had been spotted by surveillance systems crossing into Gaza in April 2015.

Previously he lived with his family in the Negev desert in southern Israel.

His parents say he has schizophrenia and needs daily medication. Relatives said he also went missing in Jordan and Egypt several times before being handed over to the Israeli authorities. They also said he entered the Gaza Strip in 2010 and 2013 and was expelled by Hamas because of his mental state.

In June 2022, Hamas published a video on Telegram showing Sayed on a bed under an artificial respirator.

– Avraham Mengistu, 38 –

Avraham Mengistu, known by the nickname Avera, is an Israeli Jew of Ethiopian origin said by the authorities to suffer from mental disorders. He has been a hostage in Gaza for more than 10 years.

He was filmed by an Israeli security camera on September 7, 2014, sneaking into Gaza by climbing the barrier, shortly after a previous Israeli offensive.

His abduction, which initially went unnoticed, was announced by Israel in July 2015.

Born in Ethiopia, he arrived in Israel aged five in May 1991 with more than 14,000 people who were transferred from Ethiopia to Israel in 36 hours.

His family moved to Ashkelon, southern Israel, where he lived before his abduction.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Gaza:

Hamas is waiting for a response from Israel on its ceasefire proposal, two officials from the Palestinian group said on Sunday, five days after it accepted a key part of a U.S. plan aimed at ending the nine-month-old war in Gaza.

“We have left our response with the mediators and are waiting to hear the occupation’s response,” one of the two Hamas officials told Reuters, asking not to be identified.

The three-phase plan for the Palestinian enclave was put forward at the end of May by U.S. President Joe Biden and is being mediated by Qatar and Egypt. It aims to end the war and free around 120 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas.

Another Palestinian official, with knowledge of the ceasefire deliberations, said Israel was in talks with the Qataris.

“They have discussed with them Hamas’ response and they promised to give them Israel’s response within days,” the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters on Sunday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that negotiations would continue this week but has not given any detailed timeline.

Later in the day, an Israeli air strike killed Ehab Al-Ghussein, the Hamas-appointed deputy minister of labour, and three other people at a church-run school in western Gaza City sheltering Christian and Muslim families, Hamas media and the Civil Emergency Service said.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the report. Ghussein’s wife and children had already been killed in an Israeli strike in May.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, has dropped a key demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before it would sign an agreement. Instead, it said it would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout the six-week first phase, a Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

A Palestinian official close to the peace efforts has said the proposal could lead to a framework agreement if embraced by Israel and would end the war.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns will travel to Qatar this week for negotiations, a source familiar with the matter said.

The conflict was triggered nine months ago on Oct. 7 when Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israel from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages in the worst assault in Israel’s history, according to official Israeli figures.

More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military onslaught, according to Gaza health officials, and the coastal enclave has largely been reduced to rubble.

The U.N. agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, called the situation increasingly tragic, saying in a post on X, “families continue to face forced displacement, massive destruction and constant fear. Essential supplies are lacking, the heat is unbearable, diseases are spreading”.

Protests In Israel

Protesters took to the streets across Israel on Sunday to pressure the government to reach an accord to bring back hostages still being held in Gaza.

They blocked rush hour traffic at major intersections across the country, picketed politicians houses and briefly set fire to tires on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway before police cleared the way.

Meanwhile, fighting continued to rage across Gaza, and north Israel came under rocket attack from Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Air raid sirens sent residents of 24 Israeli towns running for shelter. One person was seriously wounded, police said. Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at an army base.

In Gaza, Palestinian health officials said at least 15 people were killed in separate Israeli military strikes on Sunday.

An Israeli air strike on a house in the town of Zawayda, in central Gaza, killed at least six people and wounded several others, while six others were killed in an air strike on a house in western Gaza, the health officials said.

Tanks deepened their raids in central and northern areas of Rafah on the southern border with Egypt. Health officials there said they had recovered three bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the eastern part of the city.

The Israeli military said on Sunday its forces had killed 30 Palestinian gunmen in Rafah during close combat and air strikes in the past day.

In Shejaia, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, the military said its forces killed several Palestinian gunmen, and located weapons and explosives.

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, an allied fighter group, said fighters attacked Israeli forces in several locations across the Gaza Strip with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)