Hamas has freed an American woman and her teenage daughter it had held hostage in the Gaza Strip, Israel said, the first such release from among around 200 people the militant group abducted during its October 7 rampage through southern Israel.

Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie are out of the Gaza Strip and in the hands of the Israeli military, an army spokesman said. Hamas said it had released them for humanitarian reasons in an agreement with the Qatari government.

The release comes amid growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says is aimed at rooting out Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.

Judith and Natalie Ranaan had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays, family said.

They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, on October 7 - Simchat Torah, a festive Jewish holiday - when Hamas fighters stormed out of the territory into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting 203 others.

The family heard nothing from them after the attack and were later told by US and Israeli officials that they were being held in Gaza, Natalie’s brother Ben said.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said there was “concern” about the location of a stage next to the war memorial at a similar demonstration last week.

Mr Adelekan added that more than 1,000 officers will be deployed to police the demonstration on Saturday in central London arranged by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition and other activist groups.

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Nearly two weeks after Hamas militants left his village scorched and shattered, Shachar Butler returned to bury a friend who was slain. But it was the town itself, a quarter of its residents dead or missing, that he eulogized.

“It was the happiest place alive. It was a green place, with animals and birds and kids running around,” Butler said Thursday, standing in a landscape of ransacked homes and bullet-riddled cars, the heat thick with the odor of death.

“They burned the houses while the people were inside,” said Butler, a father of three who spent hours trading gunfire with militants on Oct. 7. “The people who came out are the people who got kidnapped, killed, executed, slaughtered. ... It’s unimaginable. It’s just unimaginable.”

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There’s a saying among us videojournalists: May the news stay far from your home. But on Saturday, Oct. 7, it came terrifyingly close to my hometown.

While I live in Jerusalem, where I work as a cameraman for The Associated Press, I was raised in Ofakim, a city a half-hour drive from the border with Gaza. My mother, parents-in-law and siblings still call it home. I met my wife there.

It was a tight-knit and safe community, made up of some 13,000 working-class Jews of North African descent. Everybody knew everybody.

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Judith and Natalie Raanan, who were kidnapped by Hamas two weeks ago, have been pictured for the first time after being released.

The American mother and daughter were pictured on Friday night walking to freedom while holding hands with Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for the captives and missing.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has met with the boss of the BBC to express its “outrage” over the broadcaster’s use of language to describe Hamas and its “damaging” coverage of the immediate aftermath of the bombing of a hospital in Gaza City.

The corporation said it is “committed to continued dialogue” following Friday’s meeting, at which the Board of Deputies said the BBC was “left in no doubt as to the strength of feeling in the Jewish community”.

BBC director general Tim Davie met Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl and its chief executive Michael Wegier.

The Board of Deputies, which describes itself as the voice of the Jewish community in Britain, said the BBC had confirmed it is no longer the corporation’s practice to call Hamas militants, but instead is describing the group as a proscribed terrorist organisation by the UK Government and others, or simply as Hamas.

A British-Israeli rabbi whose daughters and wife were shot dead in a Hamas terrorist attack has said he feels safer in Israel than the UK due to the current climate of antisemitism.

Rabbi Leo Dee said seeing people in the UK “marching in support of Hamas” reminded him of Hitler supporters marching in Berlin, and he feels safer in Israel where residents are “more prepared”.

His wife Lucy, 48, and daughters, Rina, 15, and Maia, 20, were fatally wounded in a shooting in the West Bank on April 7.

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A first picture has been shared on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, of Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie after being released by Hamas.

The two had been held in the Gaza Strip as hostages after the terror group’s shock incursion on 7 October. In a statement on Telegram, Hamas said the two were being released for humanitarian reasons following an agreement with the Qatari government.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is now updating media on the release of hostages Judith and Natalie Raanan.

He says the two Americans are safely in the hands of authorities in Israel. Blinken adds that US officials will meet with them as soon as possible.

Blinken also says there’s still 10 additional Americans who remain unaccounted for.

“No family anywhere should have to experience this torture,” he says.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron on Friday welcomed the release of two American hostages in Gaza, highlighting Qatar’s role and saying he hoped similar initiatives would happen in the coming days, including for French nationals.

Speaking to reporters he said he would not attend a meeting in Egypt on Saturday on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, but would travel to the region in the coming days or weeks if he felt it could reduce tensions.