Hamas starts the seventh round of trade talks with Israel; six prisoners will be freed

As part of the recent ceasefire deal, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has started the process of handing over six Israeli prisoners. This marks the seventh exchange of prisoners with the occupying regime.

The movement in Gaza gave the six Israeli prisoners to the International Red Cross in the city of Rafah in the south on Saturday. The seventh group of prisoners given to the Red Cross was the first step of the mid-January ceasefire agreement. The first exchange in Rafah saw the handover of two Israeli prisoners.

Hamas displayed a banner at the exchange site, proclaiming, “We are the flood; we are the extreme strength.

” According to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, the al-Qassam Brigades set up the trade, the military branch of Hamas, in two places: in Rafah and in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip. A team from the International Red Cross in Rafah received two Israeli prisoners, Tal Shoham and Avra Mengistu.

Before, Hamas said it would free six Israeli inmates—Elia Maimon Yitzhak Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Finkert, Tal Shoham, Avera Mengistu, and Hisham al-Sayed—in exchange for 602 Palestinian prisoners and kidnapped persons. The names of the Palestinian inmates who will be freed under the new round of exchange deals were released by the Israeli government on Saturday.

The Hamas Media Office said that 50 Palestinian prisoners who were given life sentences, 60 prisoners with long sentences, and 47 people who were arrested by the government would be freed. The office said that 445 prisoners from the Gaza Strip who were taken hostage after October 7, 2023, will also be freed.