Hostage video horror
Two feared dead as Israel flags easing of conflict in south
Israel has said the “intensive” phase of its war on Hamas in devastated southern Gaza could end “soon”, as Hamas released two videos designed to torment the families of hostages held in Gaza.
Hamas announced the death of two of the Israeli hostages it abducted in the October attack, in a video Israel condemned as a “brutal use of innocent hostages”.
The video shows a female hostage named as Noa Argamani, 26, speaking under duress, revealing that two men she was held captive with had been killed.
Hamas had released another video on Sunday showing Ms Argamani along with two hostages who were seen alive. The pair – widely named in the media as Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itay Svirsky, 38 – were the same men announced as having been killed in Monday’s video.
Israel’s army condemned
the video as a “brutal use of innocent hostages”.
In a statement released with the video, Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said the two men were killed in “the Zionist army’s bombing”.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari rejected Hamas’s claim the hostages were killed by Israeli forces.
“This is a lie by Hamas,” he said. “The building in which they were kept was not a target and it was not attacked by our forces.
“We know that we hit targets near the location where they were held,” he said, adding that an investigation was under way.
The investigation was “examining the pictures that Hamas is disseminating, alongside additional information that we have,” Mr Hagari said.
Shortly after the Hamas video’s release, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the terrorist group was applying “psychological pressure” to the families of the hostages.
The army was helping the families, he said, and keeping them up to date with any developments. “Hamas has been hit hard by the IDF (military) – what’s left for it is to touch a sensitive nerve in Israeli society through acts of psychological abuse against family members.”
Ruling out any ceasefire in Gaza, Mr Gallant reiterated that the only way to get the hostages back home was by continuing to apply “military pressure”. But he also said an “intense manoeuvring stage” due to last about three months “will end soon” in southern Gaza.
He said the stage was already being reached in northern Gaza, with Israel’s army confirming one of its four divisions in the territory completed its withdrawal on Monday.
Deadly violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, exchanges of fire over Israel’s border with Lebanon, and strikes by US forces and Iranbacked Yemeni rebels in the Red Sea have raised fears of an escalation of the fighting beyond the Gaza Strip.
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Monday reiterated calls for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza “to ensure sufficient aid gets to where it is needed; to facilitate the release of the hostages; to tamp down the flames of wider war”.
Three Palestinians were killed on Monday in separate clashes with the Israeli army, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The Israeli army said its troops had opened fire and killed one person in Dura, near Hebron, after a crowd of about 100 “hurled Molotov cocktails and blocks” at them.
In central Israel, a suspected car-ramming attack killed one woman and injured 17 other people, medics said. Two Palestinians were arrested.
Meanwhile, discussions have opened about the future reorganisation of the Palestinian territories after the war. Mr Gallant on Monday said a Palestinian “civilian alternative” would govern post-war Gaza where Israeli forces would enjoy “freedom of operation” and with Hamas unable to “rule or function”.
The future Gaza government must grow out of the Gaza Strip,” Mr Gallant said at a press conference.