Israel fears only 40 hostages still alive

FEARS were growing last night that only 40 of the 133 hostages held by Hamas are still alive.

The figure is based on intelligence gathered by Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, which followed the October 7 massacre when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 240 hostages from southern Israel to Gaza.

A source said: ‘[Intelligence] is much easier to access than before October 7 when we had limited access to Gaza and we didn’t have a lot of possibilities of sources. The situation is completely different because we are there.’

Israel’s retaliation to the attack has left 33,000 Palestinians dead, the terror group claims. Israel says 14,000 of them were Hamas operatives.

Two of the hostages are British citizens, Nadav Popplewell, 51, and Emily Damari, 27. So far 112 hostages have been returned alive to Israel.

Of those, 105 were released as part of an exchange last year.

Before that, Hamas released four prisoners, while three more were rescued by the Israel Defense Forces.

The source added: ‘Hamas is trying to keep everything very secret . . . they will never release all the hostages and corpses.’

Another security source said: ‘Negotiating is a lost cause. We cannot possibly negotiate dead bodies for the release of hundreds or thousands more terrorists.’

Yehonatan Sabban, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, said: ‘The hostages in Gaza are running out of time.’