KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip>> Hamas on Friday freed an American woman and her teenage daughter it had held hostage in Gaza, Israel said, the first such release from among the approximately 200 people the militant group abducted from Israel during its Oct. 7 rampage.

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

The release comes amid growing expectations of an expected ground offensive that Israel says is aimed at rooting out Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip. Israel said Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the tiny territory, home to 2.3 million people.

As the Israeli military punished Gaza with airstrikes, authorities inched closer to bringing aid from Egypt to desperate families and hospitals. Fighting between Israel and militants in neighboring Lebanon also raged, prompting evacuations of Lebanese and Israeli border towns as fears of a widening conflict grew.

Judith and Natalie Raanan — whose brother Ben lives in Denver — had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays, the family said. They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, on Oct. 7 — Simchat Torah, a festive Jewish holiday — when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting 203.

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

Before the release was announced Friday, Ben, described Natalie as a typical 17-year-old: She loves art, makeup, fashion and DoorDash — “She hates eating at home.”

She graduated from high school in the Chicago suburbs this year and has a birthday coming up, according to her brother, who is 34.

Before she left with her mother on a trip to Israel to celebrate her grandmother’s 85th birthday, the teen was deciding between going to college to study interior or fashion design and taking an apprenticeship with a tattoo shop.

The pair had been sending updates as the trip progressed and were enjoying “this really special mom-and-daughter time together,” said their rabbi, Meir Hecht.

Natalie is “just a very loving, kind person,” Ben said. Their middle brother, Adam, is nonverbal and much older than she is, but Natalie makes it a priority to maintain a strong bond with him, he explained.

Judith Raanan is very active in her faith community, Chabad of Evanston, said her friend and the rabbi’s wife, Yehudis Hecht. Judith goes to Shabbat almost every week, helped prepare the Kiddush lunch, and just before she left for Israel she dropped off a pink prayer book for the Hechts’ 7-year-old daughter, who loves the color, said Yehudis Hecht.

Natalie’s father, Uri Raanan of Illinois, said she’s doing well after her release.

He said he spoke to his daughter by telephone. “She’s doing good. She’s doing very good,” said Uri Raanan, who lives in the Chicago suburbs. “I’m in tears, and I feel very, very good.” Knowing Natalie may be able to celebrate her 18th birthday next week at home with family and friends feels “wonderful. The best news,” the 71-year-old said.

He said he believes Natalie and Judith were in transit to Tel Aviv to reunite with relatives and that both will be back in the U.S. early next week.

“I am overjoyed that they will soon be reunited with their family, who has been wracked with fear,” President Joe Biden said. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which transported the freed Americans from Gaza to Israel, said their release was “a sliver of hope.”

Relatives of other captives welcomed the release and appealed for the 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.

Qatar said it would continue its dialogue with Israel and Hamas in hopes of winning the release of all hostages “with the ultimate aim of deescalating the current crisis and restoring peace.”

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel was continuing to work to return hostages and find the missing, and its goals had not changed. “We are continuing the war against Hamas and ready for the next stage of the war,” he said.

A potential Israeli ground assault is likely to lead to a dramatic escalation in casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion. More than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry run by Hamas. That includes a disputed number of people who died in a hospital explosion this week.

Speaking to lawmakers about Israel’s long-term plans for Gaza, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan that seemed to suggest that Israel did not intend to reoccupy the territory it left in 2005.

First, Israeli airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas. Next will come a lower-intensity fight to defeat remaining pockets of resistance. And, finally, a new “security regime” will be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said.

Gallant did not say who Israel expected to run Gaza if Hamas is toppled or what the new security regime would entail.

Israel occupied Gaza from 1967 until 2005, when it pulled up settlements and withdrew soldiers. Two years later, Hamas took over. Some Israelis blame the withdrawal from Gaza for the sporadic violence that has persisted since then.

The humanitarian crisis has worsened for Gaza’s civilians every day since Israel halted entry of supplies two weeks ago, depleting fuel, food, water and medicine.

Two days after Israel announced a deal to allow Egypt to send in aid, the border remained closed Friday as Egypt repaired the Rafah crossing, damaged by Israeli strikes.

More than a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate the northern part of the sealed-off enclave on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.