(WBBM NEWSRADIO/AP) -- Israel says Hamas has freed two Evanston women who had been held hostage in Gaza since militants rampaged through southern Israel Oct. 7, U.S. officials have confirmed.
Fifty-nine-year-old Judith Raanan and her 18-year-old daughter Natalie had been in Israel for about a month to celebrate the High Holidays and visit family at the time of the deadly Hamas incursion.
Judith Raanan was a member of Chabad of Evanston. She and her daughter were last in a Kibbutz near the Gaza border before they disappeared. They are now in the hands of the Red Cross.
Relatives of other captives welcomed the release and appealed for others to be freed.
“We call on world leaders and the international community to exert their full power in order to act for the release of all the hostages and missing,’’ the statement said.
The hostage release Friday came even as Israeli airstrikes continued to hit southern Gaza, an area swelled by civilians who fled there from the north on Israeli instructions.
(© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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