Hamas Frees US Hostages Judith And Natalie Raanan From Gaza

Islamist group Hamas released two US hostages, mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan, who were kidnapped in its attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said yesterday.

The women, who were taken from Nahal Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border, were on their way to a military base in central Israel, a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.

Media reports in the United States said they were from Evanston, a suburb of Chicago.

They were the first hostages to be freed since Hamas gunmen burst into Israel nearly two weeks ago, killing 1,400 people, mainly civilians, and taking around 200 hostages.

Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, said the hostages were released in response to Qatari mediation efforts, “for humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless”.

An Israeli army statement earlier in the day said a majority of the hostages were alive.

Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, which rules Gaza, relentlessly pounding the strip with air strikes, putting the enclave’s 2.3 million people under a total siege and banning shipments of food, fuel and medical supplies.

The secretary-general of the United Nations visited the crossing between the besieged Gaza Strip and Egypt on Friday, and said humanitarian aid must be allowed across as soon as possible.

At least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed, including hundreds of children, and 13,000 wounded in Gaza, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The U.N. says more than a million have been made homeless.

Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the perimeter of Gaza for an expected ground invasion.

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the main Palestinian Christian denomination, said that overnight Israeli forces had struck the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, where hundreds of Christians and Muslims had sought sanctuary. (Reuters)