JERUSALEM, Feb 1: Hamas militants on Saturday released Israeli hostages Yarden Bibas, Ofer Kalderon and Kieth Siegel after they spent nearly 16 months of captivity in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
They are the fourth batch of hostages to be freed under a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange deal between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas that went into effect on January 19.
This is what we know about the three men.
Bibas, 35, was released without his wife Shiri or his two children -- Kfir, the youngest hostage who was eight and a half months old at the time of his capture on October 7, 2023, and his brother Ariel, then four.
Hamas says the boys and their mother were killed in an Israeli air strike in November 2023, but Israel has not confirmed their deaths.
More Israeli hostages freed and more Palestinian prisoners rele...
Kfir and Ariel are the only children to be listed for release during the first phase of the ceasefire deal, but Israel has said eight of the 33 hostages are dead, without specifying who.
Yarden Bibas was filmed with a bloodied head as gunmen took him from Nir Oz kibbutz during Hamas's October 7 attack.
His in-laws, Yossi and Margit Silberman, were killed in the attack when their home was set ablaze.
Before the attack, the Bibas family had been planning to move from Nir Oz to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed, to escape rocket fire from Gaza.
A welder by trade, he proposed to his wife in Italy and was known for his love of good food, according to Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
French-Israeli Ofer Kalderon was seized along with his son Erez, 12, and daughter Sahar, 16, from Nir Oz kibbutz. The two children were released during a week-long Gaza truce in November 2023.
He is a carpenter and a skilled mountain biker, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
He was naturalised as a Portuguese citizen in October 2023, shortly after his capture, to facilitate negotiations on his release, according to Portuguese media.
American-Israeli Keith Siegel, an occupational therapist who turned 65 in captivity, was seized from his home in kibbutz Kfar Aza along with his wife Aviva, who was released during the November 2023 truce.
"They just opened the door. We were sat there in our pyjamas. And they just took us away... in a very brutal way. They pushed Keith and broke his ribs," Aviva told AFP.
The couple have four children and five grandchildren.
Siegel appeared in a Hamas video on April 27, 2024, in which he is seen breaking down in tears, hiding his face and saying he is afraid.
