JERUSALEM — Israel has received the bodies of four more Israeli hostages, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said early Thursday local time.
The office said it received the coffins of the hostages from the Red Cross after Hamas turned the bodies over to the group. An initial identification process is now underway in Israel.
Hamas earlier said that it would be releasing Tsachi Idan, 49; Shlomo Mantzur, 85; Itzhak Elgarat, 68; and Ohad Yahalomi, 49. Israel has not released confirmation that the bodies were of those four hostages.
Abu Obaida, a spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing Al Qassam Brigades, told NBC News that Hamas would release the bodies according to the terms of the ceasefire deal it brokered with Israel on Jan. 19.
The four bodies are expected to be the final Israeli hostages released as part of the first phase of the five-week-old ceasefire, with 29 hostages returned so far out of an agreed 33. Israeli and Hamas negotiators have yet to begin talks regarding the ceasefire’s second phase.
Four of the hostages handed over last week were also deceased, with what Hamas said was a mix-up in the identity of one abductee at one point threatening to derail the ceasefire.
Around 600 Palestinian prisoners and detainees were supposed to be handed over late last week but weren’t. The Hamas Prisoners’ Media Office said that 590 to 594 prisoners from Gaza were expected to be released Wednesday night. The Israeli government have yet to confirm that figure.
Preparations were underway at the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis to receive the prisoners, who were expected to arrive from 10 p.m. to midnight, local time, the Prisoners’ Media Office said in a statement.
Live video from The Associated Press and Reuters showed buses leaving Ofer Prison early Thursday local time. In one video, people were seen getting off a bus to a large crowd that had gathered in Ramallah.
The Israeli government delayed their release, set for last Saturday, after forensic testing revealed that a casket handed over by Hamas bearing the image of Shiri Bibas, 32, did not contain her body.
Bibas was laid to rest on Wednesday along with her two young sons, who were 4 years old and just shy of 9 months old when they were taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. Oded Lifshitz, the fourth body handed over last week by Hamas, was 84 when he died, and he was buried on Tuesday.
Thousands of people line the street to watch and pay their respects as the funeral procession carrying the caskets of Shiri Bibas, Kfir Bibas and Ariel Bibas pass by with the family in minibuses behind them on its way to the funeral on February 26, 2025 in Rishon LeZion, Israel.
Around 250 hostages were taken Oct. 7 and around 1,200 Israelis were killed, Israeli officials say. The attacks sparked the almost year-and-a-half war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas that has killed more than 48,300 people in the enclave, Hamas-run health authorities say.
With the handover due to happen at night, Hamas looks set to avoid a repeat of the scenes of previous handovers. Last week, caskets it said contained four deceased Israeli hostages were paraded on a stage against a backdrop of propaganda slogans.
The ceremony was widely condemned by human rights groups and the international community.
Shlomo Mantzur, one of the four deceased hostages to be handed over Wednesday, was the oldest of all the people kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Mantzur, who was 85, was seized at gunpoint from his home on kibbutz Kisufim. His family had remained hopeful that he had survived, but the Israeli army said earlier this month that he had been killed on Oct. 7 and his body taken to Gaza.
Mantzur immigrated to Israel from Iraq at 13, after surviving the 1941 pogrom against the Jewish community in Baghdad, known as the Farhud, in which 200 people were killed.
A father of five and one of the founders of the kibbutz Kisufim, Mantzur ran his own carpentry and clock-repair workshop.
Tsachi Idan was seized from his home in kibbutz Nahal Oz after Palestinians held his family at gunpoint and killed the oldest of his three children, 18-year-old Maayan.
After using the family home as an organization point, Hamas gunmen left his wife, Gali, and their two other children, Yael, then 11, and son, Shahar, then 9, behind. Yael told Israel’s Channel 12 last year that the gunmen had promised that her father would return.
From the testimony of returning hostages, the family knew that Idan was initially alive when brought into Gaza.
Itzhak Elgarat was the handyman at kibbutz Nir Oz — the kibbutz that saw many killed and taken hostage, including the Bibas family.
A dual Israeli-Danish citizen, Elgarat was seized from a safe room in his house while on the phone to his brother Dani.
Speaking last year to Australian website Quillette, Dani said he heard Itzhak say, “Dani, this is the end.” A location marker from his phone later showed that he was in Gaza.
Dani said that hostages released in November 2023 had told him that his brother was alive.
Ohad Yahalomi was wounded and kidnapped also at kibbitz Nir Oz, as he guarded his family’s safe room.
His wife and their three children — aged 12 and 10 and a third who was a toddler —were seized and placed on motorcycles.
While their son Eitan, 12, was taken alone into Gaza and released in November 2023, the mother and her two daughters managed to escape, hiding in the fields around their kibbutz until they could return home.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
