Israeli captives in Gaza: How many were there and what happened to them?

On Monday, the last 20 living Israeli captives were released by Hamas in exchange for 1,968 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

For Israel, it marked the end of a chapter of history where the fate of Israelis captured on 7 October 2023 had loomed over society.

For Palestine, meanwhile, more than 9,000 Palestinian prisoners remain in Israeli jails – nearly double the number before Israel’s genocide in Gaza began.

Now, the bodies of the last dead captives are being recovered by Hamas and delivered to Israel.

Middle East Eye breaks down what we know about the Israeli captives, how they were freed and how some of them were killed.

How did Israel respond to 7 October?

On 7 October 2023, 251 Israelis and foreign nationals were abducted during the Hamas-led attack on Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 people.

The same day, the Israeli military began bombarding the Gaza Strip, starting a war that would last two years and kill more than 67,000 Palestinians.

Israel’s government declared that returning the captives was one of its chief priorities for the war, alongside defeating Hamas.

‘In the war’s goals, there is not a single word about the captives and their return’ 

– Gadi Eisenkot, former head of Israeli military

However, some senior officials would go on to say that retrieving the captives was not a key aim of the ferocious military campaign.

Gadi Eisenkot, former head of the military who served in the “war cabinet” early in the conflict, noted that Israeli authorities essentially stopped referring to freeing the hostages as the campaign dragged on.

“In the war’s goals, there is not a single word about the captives and their return,” he told Israel’s Channel 13 News in August.

Earlier this month, Channel 12 revealed details of high-level discussions that took place in the days following the 7 October attack.

It reported that Herzi Halevi, who was then the military’s chief of staff, said at a meeting that “we must not connect the captives and missing persons to the purpose” of the war.

“Our response will not be proportionate,” he said.

How many captives were held in Gaza?

Before 7 October, there were four Israelis in Hamas captivity, including two dead Israeli soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, who were killed during the 2014 Gaza war.

Two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who crossed the border into Gaza in 2014 and 2015, respectively, were also held by Hamas.

As a result, Israel said there were a total of 255 captives in Gaza.

Of those, 168 were returned to Israel alive as part of ceasefire deals, Hamas gestures to the United States, Russia and Thailand, or due to Israeli military operations.

Meanwhile, 87 captives died in various – and often contested – circumstances. The remains of 28 of these were still in Gaza when the ceasefire was declared last week.

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Among the 255 captives were 153 adult Israeli citizens, of whom 91 were men and 62 were women. During the war, 90 adult civilians returned alive while 63 died.

Forty minors under the age of 18 were seized on 7 October, of whom 38 were released alive.

The bodies of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, aged four years old and 10 months, respectively, were returned in February 2025 along with their mother, Shiri, who was also killed. The children’s father, Yarden, was released alive that month.

In addition, Palestinian fighters seized 34 foreign citizens, most of them from Thailand.

Five of those died, and the rest were released alive by Hamas as a gesture of goodwill.

One of the dead foreigners’ bodies was released on Monday. Another was previously retrieved by the army. The remains of three other foreigners are still in Gaza.

Thirty-one soldiers were taken prisoners of war on 7 October, 11 of whom returned alive.

After they were released on Monday, Bar Kuperstein and Rom Braslavski were revealed to have been soldiers on regular service during the 7 October attack but Israeli authorities withheld that information in case it endangered them.

It was also revealed that Avinatan Or was a member of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit and was on leave at the Nova music festival when he was taken prisoner.

Deals and gestures

A total of 134 Israelis and one Nepalese citizen were released as part of three deals between Israel and Hamas. Of these, 123 were released alive and 11 dead.

In addition to the 29 foreign captives, Hamas released six Israeli citizens with foreign citizenship (three Americans and three Russians) as a gesture to their governments.

Two elderly Israeli women, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz, were released in October 2023 on humanitarian grounds.

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Thus, a total of 37 captives were released as a gesture or on humanitarian grounds. One of those, Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, was freed in May 2025 following talks with US officials in a gesture of goodwill towards US President Donald Trump.

In September, Alexander announced his intention to return to serve in the Israeli army.

As part of the first ceasefire, which lasted from 24 November to 1 December 2023, 78 Israeli civilians were released.

At the same time, three Israeli-Russians and another 24 foreign citizens were also released, not as part of the deal.

During the second truce, which took place between 19 January and 18 March 2025, which was unilaterally ended by Israel, 33 Israelis were released, including eight bodies.

In addition, five foreigners were released alive, outside the framework of the deal.

As part of Monday’s prisoner exchange, which is part of a deal that Trump says brings an end to the war between Israel and Hamas, 20 live Israeli hostages were released.

Hamas has also so far delivered eight bodies to Israel. One was a Nepalese man, another that Israel says does not belong to one of the captives.

Israeli military operations

Eighty-seven of the 251 captives seized on 7 October died or are likely dead.

Israel and Hamas trade blame over responsibility for their deaths.

Israel says that most were killed by the Hamas-led attack or by Hamas during captivity.

Hamas, on the other hand, says that many of the captives were killed by Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Over the past two years, the Israeli military has recovered the bodies of 50 Israeli and one Thai captive in operations in the Palestinian enclave.

Eight Israelis were retrieved alive by the army as part of rescue operations.

Ori Megidish, a soldier, was rescued by the army in October 2023 after the military wounded her by bombing the house in which she was kept. Luis Herr and Fernando Marman was freed by the army in February 2024 and Qaid Farhan al-Qadi was released during another operation in August 2024.

Two months before Qadi’s release, four civilians – Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan and Andrey Kozlov – were freed by the Israeli military during a huge raid on Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

During the operation, the Israeli military killed at least 274 Palestinians and wounded 698 others, in what was described as the “Nuseirat massacre”.

Israel and Hamas trade blame

Although Israel denies or refuses to comment on accusations its attacks have killed captives, there are several reports indicating that military actions have directly or indirectly harmed Israelis held in Gaza.

In March 2024, the New York Times published an investigation that said 41 Israeli captives died during their captivity, some at the hands of Hamas and others at the hands of the Israeli military.

“Every day that passes is like a Russian roulette. Roulette that Netanyahu plays until all the hostages die,” Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker,

Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that, according to Israeli officials, the number of people killed during captivity is even higher. Many, it said, were killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza, especially at the beginning of the war.

On 7 October, the Israeli army invoked the Hannibal Directive, a controversial military order designed to prevent the abduction of Israelis by shooting at the kidnappers, even at the cost of harming the captives themselves.

The Israeli military, according to local media reports, used this directive all along the Gaza-Israel boundary during the first hours of the Hamas-led offensive.

According to an Al Jazeera investigation, at least 19 Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli forces on 7 October, and others may have been killed in helicopter gunship attacks on vehicles heading toward the Gaza fence.

Months later, in April 2024, the military admitted that an Israeli civilian had been killed as a result of army fire on that day.

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Efrat Katz, who Israel does not include among the 255 captives, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz but killed before she reached the Gaza Strip after military helicopter fired at the vehicle she was in.

In December 2023, the military announced that three captives – Samer Fuad El-Talalka, Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz – were killed by military gunfire in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The three men waved a white flag after apparently managing to escape from their captors during intense clashes.

According to the military, they were seen as a threat and shot dead by Israeli troops.

Sahar Baruch was killed during a rescue attempt in December 2023, the Israeli military admitted in May 2024. Yet the military refused to determine whether he was killed by military gunfire or Hamas’s.

In February 2024, it was reported that the military concluded Yossi Sharabi had been killed by an Israeli air strike on the house where he was held in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Two other captives were with him: Noa Argamani, who was later rescued, and Itay Svirsky, who, according to the New York Times investigation, was shot dead by Hamas as military forces approached his new location. Hamas said Svirsky was killed by Israeli attacks.

Argamani spoke about the incident months after her release.

“One day the house was bombed and it collapsed on us. We found ourselves in the rubble,” Argamani said.

“Itay was able to stand, and Yossi and I were trapped under the rubble. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. I thought to myself that this might be the last second of my life,” she added.

“I shouted loudly so that someone could hear me, and I heard Yossi shouting as well, but after a few seconds I stopped hearing Yossi’s screams.”

Gas pumped into tunnels

According to an investigation by the Israeli magazine Local Call, from February 2025, Israel dropped bombs on Gaza that were intended, among other things, to disperse toxic gas in Hamas tunnels. This, the report said, led to the death of a number of captives.

In November 2023, according to the investigation, three captives – Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman and Elia Toledano – were killed after they inhaled toxic gas after Israeli bombing targeted senior Hamas official Ahmed Ghandour.

The Israeli military confirmed that the three were killed as a result of suffocation in the northern Gaza Strip.

According to Local Call’s investigation, six other captives – Alexander Danzig, Yoram Metzger, Haim Perry, Yagev Buchshtav, Nadav Popplewell, and Avraham Munder – may have been killed in the same way in February 2024 during an Israeli attack in Khan Younis.

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Perry’s wife, Osnat, said the military told her that the captives had “died from carbon monoxide gas as a result of the deep strikes”. However, according to the military and family members, all the bodies bore signs of violence and gunfire.

At the end of August 2024, the military announced that it had located the bodies of six captives in a tunnel in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

According to the military, Hirsch Goldberg-Poland, Eden Yerushalmi, Uri Danino, Almog Seroussi, Carmel Gat and Alex Lubanov had been shot dead by Hamas as military forces were close to the tunnel where they were held.

Though Hamas did not directly address the deaths, Abu Obeida, spokesman of Hamas’ military wing, said the movement’s fighters had been given new protocols to deal with captives if threatened by the Israeli military.

In response to the deaths, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv to protest the continuation of the war, in what was one of the largest demonstrations in Israel during the Gaza genocide.

“Every day that passes is like a Russian roulette. Roulette that Netanyahu plays until all the hostages die,” Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, who was released this week, said at the time.

The announcement of the death of the Bibas family similarly caused great shock in Israel. Their bodies were returned in February 2025 after months of speculation about their deaths.

Hamas said that they were killed by Israeli bombing. However, Israel said an autopsy showed they were killed by hand, without providing evidence.