UPDATED 10/21 9:14 A.M.
GAZA/EVANSTON, Illinois (Reuters) -Two newly freed American hostages, a Chicago-area woman and her teenage daughter, were reunited with family inside Israel on Friday as relatives celebrated back home in Illinois, nearly two weeks after Hamas gunmen abducted them and dozens of others near Gaza.
Judith Tai Raanan, 59, and her daughter Natalie, 17, were handed over to Israeli forces at the Gaza Strip border on Friday, becoming the first captives whose release by Hamas has been confirmed by both sides since the latest round of Arab-Israeli bloodshed erupted.
The release was announced by Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, and confirmed a short time later in a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli leader said the mother and daughter, from the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, were “on their way to a meeting point at a military base in the center of the country, where their family members are waiting for them.”
Reached by phone in Bannockburn, Illinois, outside Chicago, Uri Raanan, the teenager’s father, said he spoke with his daughter by phone. “She sounds very, very good, very happy – and she looks good.”
Natalie Raanan’s uncle, Avraham Zamir, said the family was joyful the pair had been safely released. “But there are still many families whose loved ones are still being held hostage, and we will continue our efforts for their release,” he said from his home in Illinois.
At a candle lighting for the start of the Jewish sabbath at sundown on Friday, Rabbi Meir Hecht, co-director of the Chabad House in Evanston where Judith Raanan has worshiped for more than 10 years, said the Orthodox Jewish congregation hopes for “ultimate peace.”
“Our prayers have been answered for Judith and Natalie,” he said. “We will continue to pray for each and every one of the hostages.”
According to both Netanyahu and relatives, the mother and daughter were abducted from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the surprise assault on southern Israel carried out from Gaza by Iranian-backed Islamist militants of Hamas on Oct. 7.
The pair were visiting the kibbutz, about a mile from the Gaza border as part of a trip that began in September to celebrate the Jewish holidays, the younger Raanan’s high school graduation and the 85th birthday of her grandmother, family members said.
Friends described Judith Raanan to the New York Times as an artist and skilled cook of Israeli food who is devoted to her Jewish faith, which informs her paintings, and kept kosher in her home. She had recently worked as a home aide for elderly people, the Times reported.
Natalie Raanan’s brother, Ben Raanan, told the Denver Post his sister was weighing whether to find work in the fashion industry, become an interior designer or apprentice as a tattoo artist.
IMAGES OF FREEDOM
The mother and daughter were pictured in an image carried by Israeli media showing a group of uniformed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel escorting them from the border moments after their release. The two appeared healthy as they walked through the illuminated darkness, hand-in-hand with Israeli Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, the IDF’s chief hostage negotiator.
U.S. President Joe Biden thanked Qatar and Israel for their partnership in securing the Raanans’ freedom. The president said on social media platform X he had spoken with the two by telephone, and posted a photo of them, apparently taken during that call.
Hamas separately released a video of the two women being turned over to workers with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC).
The Raanans were among about 200 hostages that Hamas said it took during the deadly rampage into communities and military bases in southern Israel, part of the bloodiest attack on the country since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
Hamas has said 50 more captives are held by other armed groups in the coastal Palestinian enclave. It said more than 20 hostages have been killed by Israeli air strikes, but has not given any further details.
RELEASE A ‘FIRST STEP’
Hamas said the two women, who Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported were dual Israeli-American nationals, were freed “for humanitarian reasons” in response to Qatari mediation.
Hamas has previously described captives with “foreign” nationalities as “guests” who would be released when circumstances allow, without saying if that included Israelis with dual nationality.
A source briefed on the hostage negotiations called the release of the two Americans “a first step,” adding, “discussions are ongoing for more releases.”
American and British officials said they have been working with Qatar to secure release of hostages, including their own citizens, held in Gaza. Other countries whose citizens were taken captive include Thailand, Argentina, Germany, France and Portugal.
Israel responded to the Oct. 7 attack, which killed 1,400 people, by pounding Gaza with air strikes, killing more than 4,000 people, and has said it will act to free the hostages while wiping out Hamas.
Netanyahu’s options for striking back at Hamas are certain to be hampered by concern for the safety of the Israeli captives seized in the raid, as a nation scarred by past hostage crises faces perhaps its worst one yet.
The prime minister has vowed “mighty vengeance,” but the fate of the Israeli soldiers, elderly people, women and children taken into Gaza complicates how Israel delivers on that promise while abiding by a longstanding principle of leaving no one behind.
(Reporting by Enas Alashray in Cairo and and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; additional reporting by Eric Cox and Tom Polansek in Evanston, Illinois; Writing by Steve Gorman and Michael Georgy; Editing by Grant McCool and Lincoln Feast.)
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UPDATED 3:39 P.M.
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The Islamist group Hamas released two U.S. 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 on Friday.
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, an Illinois 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”.
President Joe Biden in a statement thanked Qatar and Israel for their partnership in securing the pair’s release.
A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson said the release of the hostages took place “after many days of continuous communication” and dialogue on the release of hostages would continue.
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.
U.S. troops have come under increasing attacks in Syria and Iraq since Oct. 7, raising concerns about a possible escalation.
A U.S. official told Reuters that a U.S. Navy warship intercepted four missiles and more than a dozen drones on Thursday near Yemen fired from Iran-aligned Houthis in the direction of Israel, more than the number announced previously.
CHURCH HIT
Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the perimeter of Gaza for an expected ground invasion.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that achieving Israel’s objectives would not be quick or easy.
“We will topple the Hamas organisation. We will destroy its military and governing infrastructure. It’s a phase that will not be easy. It will have a price,” he told a parliamentary committee.
He added that the subsequent phase would be more drawn out, but was aimed at achieving “a completely different security situation” with no threat to Israel from Gaza. “It’s not a day, it’s not a week, and unfortunately it’s not a month,” he said.
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.
It said targeting churches that were used as shelters for people fleeing bombing was “a war crime that cannot be ignored”.
Video from the scene showed a wounded boy being carried from rubble at night.
“They felt they would be safe here. They came from under the bombardment and the destruction, and they said they would be safe here but destruction chased them,” a man cried out.
Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office said 18 Christian Palestinians had been killed, while the health ministry later gave a toll of 16.
The Israeli military said part of the church was damaged in a strike by fighter jets on a nearby Hamas command centre involved in launching rockets and mortars towards Israel, and that it was reviewing the incident.
“The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) can unequivocally state that the church was not the target of the strike,” it said.
‘EVERYTHING I DREAMT OF’ DESTROYED
Israel has already told all civilians to evacuate the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which includes Gaza City. Many people have yet to leave saying they fear losing everything and have nowhere safe to go with southern areas also under attack.
In Zahra, a northern Gaza town, residents said their entire district of some 25 apartment buildings was razed.
They received Israeli warning messages on their mobile phones at breakfast, followed 10 minutes later by a small drone strike. After another 20 minutes, F-16 warplanes brought the buildings down in huge explosions and clouds of dust.
“Everything I ever dreamt of and thought that I have achieved was gone. In that apartment was my dream, my memories with my children, and my wife, was the smell of safety and love,” Ali, a resident of the district, told Reuters by phone.
The United Nations humanitarian affairs office said more than 140,000 homes – nearly a third of all homes in Gaza – have been damaged, with nearly 13,000 completely destroyed.
The south of the enclave has also been regularly hit. Rescue workers were combing through the wreckage of a house in the main southern city, Khan Younis, for survivors. One carried the limp body of a child.
“We don’t want to receive aid, we want the destruction and the killing of children in their sleep to stop. We are tired,” said neighbour Joumana Khreis.
AID STILL HELD UP
International attention has focused on getting aid to Gaza through the one access point not controlled by Israel, the Rafah crossing to Egypt.
Biden, who visited Israel on Wednesday, said he believed trucks carrying aid would get through in the next 24-48 hours.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres toured the checkpoint on Egypt’s side and called for a meaningful number of trucks to enter Gaza every day and checks – which Israel insists on to stop aid reaching Hamas – to be quick and pragmatic.
“We are actively engaging with all parties to make sure conditions for delivering aid are lifted,” he said.
Western leaders have so far mostly offered support to Israel’s campaign against Hamas, although there is mounting unease about the plight of civilians in Gaza.
Many Muslim states, however, have called for an immediate ceasefire, and protests demanding an end to the bombardment were held in cities across the Islamic world on Friday.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on Israel to end “its operations amounting to genocide”.
The conflict is spreading to two other fronts.
Clashes at the border between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement have been the deadliest since a full-blown war in 2006, with Israel ordering the evacuation of more than 20,000 residents from the border town of Kiryat Shmona on Friday.
The West Bank, where Palestinians have limited self-rule under Israeli military occupation, has experienced the deadliest clashes since the second intifada uprising ended in 2005.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Doina Chiacu in Washington and the Washington and Jerusalem Bureaus; Writing by Peter Graff, Alex Richardson and Idrees Ali; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Daniel Wallis and Howard Goller)
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GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The Islamist group Hamas said on Friday it had released two U.S. hostages – a mother and daughter – for what it called “humanitarian reasons” following Qatari mediation efforts.
Hamas armed wing spokesman Abu Ubaida issued a statement announcing the release, the first since gunmen from the Islamist militant group burst into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people, mainly civilians, and taking around 200 hostages.
Israel’s Channel 13 News said Israel had confirmed the release of two hostages but gave no further details.
Israel levelled a northern Gaza district earlier on Friday after giving families a half-hour warning to escape and hit an Orthodox Christian church where others had been sheltering.
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, 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.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Friday that achieving Israel’s objectives would not be quick or easy.
“We will topple the Hamas organisation. We will destroy its military and governing infrastructure. It’s a phase that will not be easy. It will have a price,” he told a parliamentary committee.
He added that the subsequent phase would be more drawn out, but was aimed at achieving “a completely different security situation” with no threat to Israel from Gaza. “It’s not a day, it’s not a week, and unfortunately it’s not a month,” he said.
CHURCH HIT
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.
It said targeting churches that were used as shelters for people fleeing bombing was “a war crime that cannot be ignored”.
Video from the scene showed a wounded boy being carried from rubble at night. A civil defence worker said two people on upper floors had survived; those on lower floors had been killed and their bodies were still in the rubble.
“They felt they would be safe here. They came from under the bombardment and the destruction, and they said they would be safe here but destruction chased them,” a man cried out.
Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office said 18 Christian Palestinians had been killed, while the health ministry later gave a toll of 16.
The Israeli military said part of the church was damaged in a strike by fighter jets on a nearby Hamas command centre involved in launching rockets and mortars towards Israel, and that it was reviewing the incident.
“The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) can unequivocally state that the church was not the target of the strike,” it said.
‘EVERYTHING I DREAMT OF’ DESTROYED
Israel has already told all civilians to evacuate the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which includes Gaza City. Many people have yet to leave saying they fear losing everything and have nowhere safe to go with southern areas also under attack.
In Zahra, a northern Gaza town, residents said their entire district of some 25 apartment buildings was razed.
They received Israeli warning messages on their mobile phones at breakfast, followed 10 minutes later by a small drone strike. After another 20 minutes, F-16 warplanes brought the buildings down in huge explosions and clouds of dust.
“Everything I ever dreamt of and thought that I have achieved was gone. In that apartment was my dream, my memories with my children, and my wife, was the smell of safety and love,” Ali, a resident of the district, told Reuters by phone.
The United Nations humanitarian affairs office said more than 140,000 homes – nearly a third of all homes in Gaza – have been damaged, with nearly 13,000 completely destroyed.
The south of the enclave has also been regularly hit. Rescue workers were combing through the wreckage of a house in the main southern city, Khan Younis, for survivors. One carried the limp body of a child.
“We don’t want to receive aid, we want the destruction and the killing of children in their sleep to stop. We are tired,” said neighbour Joumana Khreis.
AID STILL HELD UP
International attention has focused on getting aid to Gaza through the one access point not controlled by Israel, the Rafah crossing to Egypt. U.S. President Joe Biden, who visited Israel on Wednesday, emerged with a promise from Israel to allow limited shipments from Egypt provided the aid is monitored to prevent any reaching Hamas.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres toured the checkpoint on Egypt’s side and called for a meaningful number of trucks to enter Gaza every day and checks to be quick and pragmatic.
“We are actively engaging with all parties to make sure conditions for delivering aid are lifted,” he said.
Western leaders have so far mostly offered support to Israel’s campaign against Hamas, although there is mounting unease about the plight of civilians in Gaza.
Many Muslim states, however, have called for an immediate ceasefire, and protests demanding an end to the bombardment were held in cities across the Islamic world on Friday.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on Israel to end “its operations amounting to genocide”.
Biden formally asked Congress on Friday for billions of dollars in U.S. military aid for Israel. But, in a televised speech the previous day, he also said: “We can’t ignore the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace and have opportunity.”
The conflict is spreading to two other fronts.
Clashes at the border between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement have been the deadliest since a full-blown war in 2006, with Israel ordering the evacuation of more than 20,000 residents from the border town of Kiryat Shmona on Friday.
The West Bank, where Palestinians have limited self-rule under Israeli military occupation, has experienced the deadliest clashes since the second intifada uprising ended in 2005.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Washington and Jerusalem Bureaus; Writing by Peter Graff and Alex Richardson; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Daniel Wallis and Howard Goller)
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