Hamas on Friday freed Americans Judith Tai Raanan, 59, and her daughter Natalie, 17, who were among around 200 kidnapped in its Oct. 7 cross-border attack on southern Israel by militants of the Islamist movement.
An image obtained by Reuters after their release showed the two women flanked by three Israeli soldiers and holding hands with Gal Hirsch, Israel's coordinator for the captives and missing.
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."
They were the first hostages confirmed by both sides in the conflict to be freed since Hamas gunmen burst into Israel and killed 1,400 people, mainly civilians, in the deadliest single attack on Israelis since the country's founding 75 years ago.
Gaza's Health Ministry says Israel's retaliatory air and missile strikes have killed at least 4,137 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, while over a million of the besieged territory's 2.3 million people have been displaced.
Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the fenced border around the small coastal enclave for a planned ground invasion with the objective of annihilating Hamas, after several inconclusive wars dating to its 2007 seizure of power in Gaza.
"Two of our abductees are at home. We are not giving up on the effort to return all abducted and missing people," Netanyahu said in a statement released late Friday night.
"At the same time, we'll continue to fight until victory."
