Plea to free hostages
Peace talks resume but Israel out to get Hamas leader
GAZA STRIP: Israel is facing growing international pressure to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, as it continues to plan for a major incursion into the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah where more than a million displaced Palestinian citizens are trapped.
CIA director William Burns met Mossad chief David Barnea in Cairo for a new round of talks on a Qatari-brokered plan to temporarily halt fighting in exchange for Hamas freeing hostages.
The negotiations, which also involved Qatar’s Prime Minister and Egyptian officials, were “positive” and would continue for three more days, a senior Egyptian official told local media.
A day after Israeli forces rescued two hostages from Gaza, the families of the remaining captives made an emotional plea to Mr Barnea and the Israeli delegation before the Cairo talks: “Do not return until everyone comes home – the living and the dead.”
The Israeli campaign group, Hostages and Missing Families Forum, has been urging the government to exhaust every option to return some 130 hostages still believed to be in Gaza. Israel says 29 of them are presumed dead.
The group called it a “oncein-a-lifetime mission” and said they must “not return without a deal”.
Militants took about 250 people hostage during the Hamas attack on October 7.
A Hamas official said they were waiting for the outcome of the Cairo meeting but were “open to discussing any initiative that achieves an end to aggression and war”.
Israel’s army on Tuesday released a video it said was of Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, filmed on October 10 with his family in a tunnel in the Palestinian territory.
The black and white images showing a man said to be Sinwar in a tunnel together with a woman and three children are said to be the first of him since the war broke out.
Israel accuses Sinwar of masterminding the unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the conflict, now in its fifth month.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops had uncovered the video in a security camera during an operation in a tunnel.
“The footage shows leader of Hamas and mass murderer, Yahya Sinwar, fleeing with his children and one of his wives,” he told a briefing.
“This is how he escaped with his family from an underground tunnel to a secured complex he had built in advance,” Admiral Hagari said.
“This hunt will not stop until we have captured him dead or alive.”