RAMALLAH: Israel will free 602 inmates from jails on Saturday as part of a prisoner swap with Hamas under an ongoing Gaza ceasefire deal, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group.

Among those released, 445 are people from Gaza who were arrested after Hamas’ October 7 attack that sparked the war, 60 are serving long sentences, 50 are serving life sentences and 47 were re-arrested after being freed in a 2011 prisoner exchange, Amani Sarahneh, spokeswoman for the NGO, told AFP on Friday.

Sarahneh added that 108 of the prisoners to be released on Saturday would be deported outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s armed wing confirmed it will hand over on Saturday six prisoners held alive in the Gaza Strip as part of the ceasefire deal with Israel.

Hamas to release six Israelis; says it is investigating possible error over prisoner’s body

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement on Friday that the release would occur as planned.

Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum published the names of the six prisoners earlier this week, naming them as Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham Al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed it had been officially informed of the names of the six prisoners to be released, which Hamas sources said was expected at around 8.30am (0630 GMT).

‘Possible error’

Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under a ceasefire deal as PM Netanyahu threatened retaliation for failing to release the body of prisoner Shiri Bibas.

Hamas was due to hand over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel on Thursday, along with the remains of a fourth prisoner under the ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.

Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the Bibas boys and the other prisoner, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.

But Israeli specialists said the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman and not Bibas, who was captured along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said “unfortunate mistakes” could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli prisoners and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried in the rubble.

“We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies or not to abide by the covenants and agreements that we sign,” he said in a statement.

Hamas said separately that it would investigate the Israeli assertions and announce the results.

The failure to hand over the body and the staged public handover of the four coffins on Thursday, caused outrage in Israel and drew a threat of retaliation from Netanyahu.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the children and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike and Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza government media office, said Netanyahu “bears full responsibility for killing her and her children”.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2025