After a year of captivity in the Gaza Strip, the fate of the 63 suspected living Israeli hostages, Hamas’s main bargaining chip for a ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners, is still uncertain.
Here are some facts about the Israeli hostages kidnapped by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on October 7, 2023:
51 men, 10 women and 2 children
On October 7, 2023, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel, the Palestinian Islamist movement’s commandos took 251 people and the remains of other hostages to Gaza.
Of these, 117 people, mostly women, children and foreign workers, were released during the only truce in the conflict, which lasted a week at the end of November 2023.
Today, on the first anniversary of the Hamas attack and the start of the war in the Palestinian territory, 97 people were still being held captive, including 63 who are presumed to be alive, 34 declared dead by the Israeli army or the Hostage Families Forum. The death of Idan Shtivi, 28, was announced today.
Among the hostages still presumed to be alive, 56 are Israelis, including at least 24 with dual nationality, six are Thai and one Nepalese.
Of these, 51 are men and 10 are women, including five soldiers. At least eleven soldiers, presumed to be alive, remain captive.
Two children, brothers Kfir and Ariel, kidnapped at eight months and four years old respectively, are still alive, as are their parents, Shiri and Yarden Bibas.
Doubts about survivors
Since the end of the truce on 1 December 2023, only seven other hostages have been freed during rescue operations by the Israeli army.
The most recent was Kaid Farhan Alkadi, freed on 27 August in the southern Gaza Strip.
In the absence of evidence of life, it is not certain that all 63 hostages are still alive.
Hamas announced on 12 August that its fighters had “killed one hostage” and “injured two hostages” in “incidents”, without identifying them. Previously, the movement had announced several deaths of hostages, which Israel did not confirm, including those of the Bibas children and their mother.
Bodies taken to Gaza
Some of the hostages were already dead when they were taken to Gaza on 7 October 2023, killed during the Hamas attack. This is particularly the case of ten soldiers.
At least 28 other hostages captured alive died in Gaza. Three of them – Yotam Haïm (28 years old), Samer al-Talalqa (25 years old) and Alon Lulu Shamriz (26 years old) – were mistakenly shot dead by the Israeli army on 15 December 2023.
The Israeli army accuses Hamas of having coldly executed six other people at the end of August: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino, found dead by soldiers in a tunnel in Rafah (in the southern Gaza Strip).
Nir Oz and Nova
Most of the suspected hostages still alive in Gaza were taken from either the Nir Oz kibbutz (20 captives) or the Nova music festival (16 kidnapped).
Nir Oz was the kibbutz with the most hostages captured on 7 October 2023. The Nova rave music festival, attended by over 3,000 people, was held between the Réïm and Beeri kibbutz on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip. In total, at least 370 people were killed and 43 kidnapped, of whom only nine have returned alive so far.
Families separated in the liberation
On 7 October 2023, entire families were taken to Gaza. For the freed hostages, the November 2023 truce was a mixture of relief and sadness at leaving family members behind.
This is particularly the case for the French-Israeli teenagers Nir Oz, Eitan Yahalomi, whose father Ohad is still captive, and Erez and Sahar Kalderon, whose father Ofer remains a hostage in Gaza.
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