Three women held hostage by Hamas reunited with their families in an emotional moment after they were freed under the truce deal. Romi Gonen, 24, Doron Steinbrecher, 31, and Emily Damari, 28 were handed over to the International Committee for the Red Cross in Gaza on Sunday afternoon.
In a video shared by the official X handle of the Prime Minister of Israel, the families were seen hugging and crying out in emotion as they embraced their returned family members.
Notably, pictures shared by the families showed Damari beaming broadly and waving a bandaged hand with two fingers missing at a family on the other end of a mobile phone video call.
On Sunday, the Israeli military said the three women had been reunited with their mothers at a meeting point inside Israel, close to the kibbutz and nearby music festival where they had been abducted.
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Gonen was abducted by the Palestinian militant group as she tried to escape the Nova music festival which was targeted by Hamas during the October 7 surprise attack.
Steinbrecher, a veterinary nurse was taken as hostage from her apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza – near Gaza’s north-western border during the surprise attack.
Damari, a British-Israeli national was also taken as hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023.
Under the deal of the truce agreement, Israel freed 90 Palestinian prisoners on Monday including 69 women and 21 teenage boys.
Among the prisoners released was politician Khalida Jarrar, according to media reports by the Associated Press and the New York Times. She is a prominent leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group designated a “terrorist organisation” by Israel, the US and the European Union.
She has been in and out of jail for much of the past decade, being previously convicted of charges like incitement.
