BREAKING: 3 Israeli Hostages Freed After Nearly 500 Days

The first three hostages to be released under Israel and Hamas’s hostage and ceasefire deal have safely arrived home after 471 days in captivity.

The three Israeli women, Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari, were transferred from Hamas to the Red Cross amid a crowd swarming the transport vehicles in Gaza.

All three women are alive and were seen in footage standing on their own.

They will undergo medical evaluation in Israel and first be reunited with their mothers at the reception complex near Kibbutz Re’im and then their entire families at the hospital.

Terrorists of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, escort vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Saraya Square in western Gaza City on January 19, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP) (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)

The ceasefire took effect at 11:15 after a delay of Hamas failing to hand over the list of hostages on time.

Steinbrecher, 31 and Damari, 28 were taken hostage from their homes in Kfar Aza on the morning of October 7. Gonen, 24, was taken hostage at the Nova music festival after being shot.

Sterinbrecher, a veterinary nurse who also holds Roamanian citizenship, was hiding under her bed when terrorists entered her apartment. Her last voice note to her loved ones was “they’ve got me, they’ve got me,” her mother recounted in a piece for the Financial Times.

Damari, who also holds British citizenship, was shot in her hand, injured by shrapnel, blindfolded, and taken into Gaza during Hamas’s attack, according to her mother. Her dog, Choocha, was reportedly shot by terrorists in the back of the neck.

President Joe Biden delivered remarks after the three women’s release, where he attempted to take a victory lap, despite the outgoing Trump administration playing a large role in securing the deal that Biden had been unable to achieve for over a year.

The first wave of hostages released in this deal comes the day before President-elect Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated and begin his second term as president.

Under the deal’s first phase, 33 hostages will be exchanged for about 1,000 Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails. The Israel Defense Forces will also pull back from certain areas of the Gaza Strip. The fate of the remaining 64 hostages in Gaza will be addressed in the later phases of the agreement.

The list of names of the 33 hostages includes two Americans: Keith Siegel, 65, and Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36. While the exact number of living hostages is uncertain, it is believed that only 22 of the 33 to be released are still alive.