Hamas released two more hostages on Monday, just days after releasing two American women on Friday, sources confirmed to CBS News after a spokesperson for Hamas announced the release.
Israeli government officials confirmed the names of the two hostages were Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz. Both women were abducted from their homes in Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small community near the Gaza border that came under attack on Oct. 7. Cooper, 80, was taken with her husband, 85-year-old Amiram Cooper, their daughter-in-law Noa told the BBC.
Lifshitz, 85, was also abducted along with her husband, 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz, according to the Times of Israel. The outlet reported that the couple were peace activists and regularly transported patients from Gaza to hospitals across Israel for medical treatments.
The women’s husbands were not released.
According to a message posted to a Hamas-affiliated Telegram channel, the two hostages released Monday were let go for humanitarian reasons after mediation by Qatar and Egypt.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also facilitated the release, the agency said on social media.
“Our role as a neutral intermediary makes this work possible & we are ready to facilitate any future release,” ICRC tweeted. “We hope that they will soon be back with their loved ones.”
Israel has said 222 hostages were taken during Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 rampage into Israel. Israel Defense Forces said Friday that more than 20 of the hostages taken to Gaza were under the age of 18, and between 10 and 20 of the hostages were over the age of 80.
The first two hostages released on Friday were Judith and Natalie Raanan, dual U.S.-Israeli citizens who live in Evanston, Illinois, and were visiting relatives in Israel. The Raanans were taken from Gaza by the International Committee of the Red Cross and reunited with family in Israel.
During his visit to Tel Aviv last week, President Biden said there was “no higher priority” for him than securing the release of the hostages held by Hamas.
Two sources told CBS News the U.S. has sought to slow Israel’s plans for a ground invasion of Gaza in order to prioritize the release of hostages and the distribution of aid. The message is said to have been conveyed primarily through defense channels.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our private conversations with the Israeli government, with the Israeli leadership, but I’ll say in all of our conversations, we continue to talk to them about the importance of having meaningful goals, meaningful objectives and a plan to achieve those objectives,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said during a briefing Monday. “We’ve been engaging in a number of levels, the Pentagon has been engaging in military to military channels about what their operations might look like, but beyond that, it was so hard to go into details other than to say that ultimately, these are decisions that Israel has to make.”
