JERUSALEM — Israel has received the bodies of four more hostages and released around 600 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange, the Israeli government and Palestinian groups said early Thursday.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said early Thursday it had received the coffins of the hostages from the Red Cross after Hamas turned the bodies. Israel's president later confirmed that the identities of the four bodies had been confirmed as Tsachi Idan, 49; Shlomo Mantzur, 85; Itzhak Elgarat, 68; and Ohad Yahalomi, 49.
Israel's President Isaac Herzog also confirmed their identities in a statement, saying that "in this painful moment, there is some solace in knowing that they will be laid to rest in dignity in Israel."
Israel also released about 600 Palestinian prisoners and detainees overnight, according to the media office of the Resistance Committees in Palestine. According to the Associated Press, those prisoners included the longest-serving prisoner released so far and a man convicted of killing an American peace activist.
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 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 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.
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 happening at night, Hamas avoided a repeat of the scenes of previous handovers at Israel's request. Last week, caskets the militant group 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.
