Hamas has named six Israeli hostages who are set to be released on Saturday while Israel is expected to release more than 600 Palestinian prisoners as part of a ceasefire agreement between the parties.

The hostages due for release are Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Tal Shoham, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Mengisto.

According to Hamas’s prisoners media office, Israel will be releasing 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees on Saturday, adding to the hundreds already released since the ceasefire took effect last month.

The release of the hostages on Saturday is the final one in this phase of the Gaza truce deal.

Mr Mengisto and Mr al-Sayed are civilians who entered the besieged enclave of Gaza a decade ago and have been held there since.

Israelis who survived being held prisoner in Gaza, where a powerful bombing campaign has left much of it destroyed, have been released in small groups since the first six-week phase began last month.

The start of negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire is expected in the coming days.

Israel and Hamas have been at war since the latter, a militant group ruling Gaza, carried out a massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 and took 251 hostage.

The latest list of hostages set for release comes amid heightened tensions between the parties after Israel claimed the body of hostage Shiri Bibas wasn’t actually hers and it had instead received the remains of an “anonymous body without identification”.

Read more from Sky News:
Woman charged with stalking Madeleine McCann’s parents
Chinese universities start teaching DeepSeek AI courses

Hamas responded that Ms Bibas’s remains appear to have been mixed with other human remains in what it claims was an “Israeli airstrike”.

Her body was meant to be handed over on Thursday alongside the bodies of her two children, who the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed they received.

The body of journalist and peace activist Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted, was also returned.

The Bibas family has become a powerful symbol of the 251 Israelis kidnapped on 7 October 2023 – not least because Kfir was the youngest taken.

The children’s father, Yarden Bibas, was released on 1 February as part of the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

Since the start of the war in October 2023, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks. Its figures do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Hamas says the remains of Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas appear to have been mixed with other human remains in what it claims was an “Israeli airstrike”.

Israel said the body handed over by Hamas was not Shiri’s, saying it had instead received the remains of an “anonymous body without identification”.

Israel claimed today forensic evidence showed Shiri and her two children were murdered in captivity by Hamas. Sky News has asked the IDF to provide evidence for their claims, but they have refused to comment further.

The Palestinian group claims Shiri and her children were all killed in Israeli airstrikes near the start of the war.

Ms Bibas was kidnapped with her sons – four-year-old Ariel, and nine-month-old Kfir – from the Niz Or kibbutz during the Palestinian militant group’s incursion into Israel in October 2023.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it received the bodies of Ariel and Kfir on Thursday.

However, it said the body that Hamas had claimed was their mother was not her and the group had therefore violated the ceasefire agreement.

“During the identification process, it was found that the additional body received was not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other abductee. It is an anonymous body without identification,” it said in a statement.

“This is a very serious violation by the Hamas terrorist organisation, which is required by the agreement to return four dead abductees. We demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all of our abductees.”

Hamas said there was the “possibility of an error or overlap in the bodies” due to Israeli bombing. Hamas has said they were all killed in Israeli airstrikes near the start of the war. The group has never provided evidence to back this up. Israel says the Bibas family were murdered by Hamas in captivity.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said Israel would make Hamas pay for failing to release Shiri’s body, calling it a “cruel and malicious violation”.

“We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages – both living and dead – and ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement,” he said in a video statement.

The body of journalist and peace activist Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted, was also handed over on Thursday.

Hamas handed over the remains as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement which was reached with Israel last month.

The bodies were transferred in four black coffins in a carefully orchestrated public display as a crowd of Palestinians and dozens of armed Hamas militants watched.

Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by.

In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, in a public square opposite Israel’s defence headquarters that has come to be known as Hostages Square.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas and said the four coffins meant “more than ever” that Israel had to ensure there was no repeat of the 7 October attack.

Mr Netanyahu said: “Our loved ones’ blood is shouting at us from the soil and is obliging us to settle the score with the despicable murderers, and we will.”

Read more:
Trump ‘very frustrated’ with Zelenskyy
Buses explode in Israel in ‘terror incident’
Trump’s direction of travel doesn’t look good for Kyiv

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said: “Agony. Pain. There are no words. Our hearts – the hearts of an entire nation – lie in tatters.”

United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, called the parading of the four bodies “cruel” and “inhumane” in a statement on Thursday.

He said: “Under international law, any handover of the remains of deceased must comply with the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, ensuring respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families.”

The Bibas family has become a powerful symbol of the 251 Israelis kidnapped on 7 October – not least because Kfir was the youngest taken.

The children’s father, Yarden Bibas, was released on 1 February as part of the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

Sombre moment for Israelis – as Hamas uses opportunity for propaganda

Diana Magnay

International correspondent

@DiMagnaySky

The return of the bodies of four Israeli hostages is a “sombre moment” for everybody in Israel and Jews across the world, our international correspondent Diana Magnay says.

She says the two young boys, Ariel and Kfir, “really became a symbol of the tremendous suffering 7 October caused”.

“Now, to have them returned back in this way is tragic.”

Referring to the scenes of coffins being transferred to the Red Cross, Magnay says Hamas has chosen to use this “as a propaganda opportunity”.

“They have missiles on the stage where the four coffins were, saying they were killed by US bombs,” she explains.

She says Hamas’s main message is “this was caused by you, you should take responsibility for it”.

She adds that 7 October was caused by Hamas, and has brought “untold suffering to both Israel and Palestinians”.

Meanwhile, six living hostages, the final due to be freed under the first phase of the Gaza truce deal, will be released on Saturday, according to Hamas.

Israelis who survived being held prisoner in Gaza have been released in small groups since the first six-week phase began last month.

The deal has provided a vital pause in the fighting that’s devastated Gaza and left tens of thousands dead.

At least 1,200 people were killed in the attack that started the war.

Since then, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks. Its figures do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Voters in Germany are being exposed to copious far-right narratives online from AI-generated content and Russian disinformation campaigns.

Experts monitoring social media say Russian-based groups are involved, including “Doppelganger” and “Storm-1516”, which US officials found to be active in America’s election last year.

Some of these campaigns are using artificial intelligence to spread their messaging ahead of Sunday’s vote, which will see Germany elect a new Bundestag.

Germany’s far-right party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) has been more active on social media than other parties during the campaign and is in second place in opinion polls.

Methods are said to include creating fake TV news stories or deep-fake videos of apparent “witnesses” or “whistle blowers” fabricating stories about prominent politicians.

For example, in November 2024, shortly before the snap election was called, a video was published that claimed one parliamentary member who is an outspoken supporter of Ukraine was a Russian spy.

Dr Marcus Faber, a member of the Free Democratic Party and head of the government’s defence committee, was targeted in a video which used AI to suggest a former adviser was making the claim. We asked Dr Faber for his reaction to the video but he was unable to comment at this time.

In another video an 18-year-old woman accused a German minister of child abuse – the accusation was false, and the video was made using AI.

A recent report from the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy, or CeMAS, a non-profit thinktank specialising in the analysis of disinformation and right-wing extremism, and Alliance 4 Europe which aims to combat digital disinformation, has linked both stories to the Russian disinformation campaign Storm-1516.

The researchers have also been tracking the Doppelganger campaign, run by a Russian PR company Social Design Agency, widely reported to have links to the Kremlin.

They have found the group’s main tactic is to create fake news articles, which often resemble well-known publications. A network of social media accounts then share and spread those articles across different platforms.

Posts will often appear to be from a worried citizen, like the one below that reads: “I am concerned that aid to Ukraine will impact our ability to invest in our own infrastructure and social security systems.”

The post links to a fake news article criticising Germany’s funding for the war in Ukraine, on a fake website resembling the German newspaper Der Spiegel.

“Different Russian campaigns are trying, on the one hand, to discredit established parties,” says Julia Smirnova, a senior researcher for CeMAS. “They’re also trying to boost the far-right AfD.”

“It’s not about just one fake video or one fake article. There’s a systematic effort to constantly create this flood of false stories, flood of propaganda stories, and continue spreading them,” she says.

From mid-December 2024 to mid-January 2025, CeMAS found a total of 630 German-language posts with typical Doppelgänger patterns on X alone.

For Ferdinand Gehringer, a cybersecurity policy adviser, Russian interference online isn’t a surprise.

“There are clear objectives for Russia to interfere and to also manipulate our public opinion,” he says.

From the party’s plan to stop sending arms to Ukraine to their calls to ramp up imports of Russian gas, he says “Russia sees within the AfD’s program and ideas the best options for future cooperation”.

CeMAS has found at least one case where a fake story that originated from a Russian campaign was spread by an AfD politician.

Stephan Protschka, a parliamentary member, posted on his social media channels that the Green Party was working with Ukraine to recruit people to commit crimes and blame them on the AfD, a narrative researchers say originated from a Russian disinformation campaign.

Sky News asked Mr Protschka for comment, but he did not respond.

We also reached out to Social Design Agency to respond to the allegations against the Doppelganger group. They did not respond. We were unable to contact anyone behind the Storm-1516 campaign for comment.

Inside Germany

Beyond the extremes of Russian-led disinformation campaigns, far-right groups within Germany are also ramping up their online presence. Take Larissa Wagner, an AI-generated social media influencer.

“Hey guys, I’m just on my way to the polling station. I’m daring this time. I’m voting for AfD,” she said in a video posted to her X account on 22 September 2024, the day of the Brandenburg state election.

Her accounts on Twitter and Instagram were both created in the last year and her regular videos espouse far-right narratives, like telling Syrian immigrants to “pack your bags and go back home”.

She even says she interned with the right-wing magazine Compact, which was banned by the German government last year.

It’s unclear who created Larissa. When Sky News messaged to ask her on Instagram she replied: “I think it’s completely irrelevant who controls me. Influencers like me are the future…

“Like anyone else, I want to share my perspective on things. Every influencer does that. But because I’m young, attractive, and right-wing, it’s framed as ‘influencing the political discourse’.”

Ferdinand Gehringer notes that her posts have become more radical over time. “The potential for influence is significant-especially since the presence of a young, attractive woman increases audience engagement,” he adds.

The far-right’s use of generative AI on social media goes beyond characters like Larissa. A report this week from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue assessed the scale of its use, identifying 883 posts since April 2023 that included images, memes and music videos made using generative AI.

The posts came from far-right supporters as well as the AfD itself – party accounts published more than 50 posts that contained generative AI content in October alone.

The AfD is using AI more than other parties, says Pablo Maristany de las Casas, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who co-authored the report. “They’re clearly the one actor that is exploiting this technology the most,” he says.

The messaging in the far-right content they sampled falls into two categories: attacking narratives, like AI-generated images of migrants portrayed as violent criminals, and narratives that glorify traditional German values.

When these two narratives are combined, “the far-right community feels more united in the so-called cultural fight against these groups that they’re attacking,” says Mr Maristany de las Casas.

Take Remigration Song, a promotional song and music video commissioned by the now-disbanded youth wing of the AfD. It was produced using AI and advocates the mass deportation of immigrants – known as remigration.

It’s this home-grown content that some experts say could affect public opinions.

A recent survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a thinktank which promotes social reform, showed that 80% of Germans consider disinformation on the internet to be a major problem for society and 88% agreed that disinformation is spread to influence political opinions.

“Just the foreign information itself is probably not going to shift attitudes” says senior researcher Cathleen Berger. “I think the impact only comes when it is being picked up by domestic actors”.

Additional reporting from Olive Enokido-Lineham, OSINT producer; Mary Poynter, Data and Forensics producer.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open-source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.