Published December 3, 2023
- Hamas released 105 hostages, in exchange for a temporary truce
- Fighting between Israel and Palestine is now back on
- Families of the remaining hostages are terrified of how they are being treated
They stumbled through the darkness of the hurriedly-dug tunnels underneath Gaza City, wondering if they’d ever see their loved ones again.
Elderly women, young mothers and frightened children were taken and used as gambling chips to further the cause of a terror group that killed 1,300 Israelis on October 7, the single deadliest day in the Jewish nation’s history.
For weeks, they were starved, beaten, drugged, branded and made to watch footage of Hamas terrorists invading their homeland with weapons pointed to their heads, until the moment was right for the terror group.
In exchange for four days of precarious ceasefire, the release of 150 Palestinian women and children from Israeli prisons, and the permission for at least 200 aid trucks to enter Gaza each day, Hamas promised to release at least 50 prisoners it had taken in the midst of chaos and spilled blood.
The deal was open-ended, and allowed for additional days of ceasefire to be agreed in exchange for additional hostages.
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SOURCE: www.dailymail.co.uk
RELATED: Israeli medical experts declare some Gaza hostages dead in absentia
A dinner table is set with empty chairs that symbolically represent hostages and missing people with families that are waiting for them to come home, following a deadly infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Tel Aviv, Israel October 20, 2023. REUTERS/Janis Laizans/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Published December 1, 2023
JERUSALEM, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Even as it tries to recover hostages through indirect talks with Hamas and army operations in the Gaza Strip, Israel has been declaring some of the missing as dead in captivity, a measure designed to grant anxious relatives a measure of closure.
A three-person medical committee has been poring over videos from the Oct. 7 rampage by Hamas-led Palestinian gunmen in southern Israel for signs of lethal injuries among those abducted, and cross-referencing with the testimony of hostages freed during a week-long Gaza truce that ended on Friday.
That can suffice to determine that a hostage has died, even if no doctor has formally pronounced this over his or her body, said Hagar Mizrahi, a Health Ministry official who heads the panel created in response to a crisis now in its third month.
“Designation of death is never an easy matter, and certainly not in the situation embroiling us,” she told Israel’s Kan radio. Her committee, she said, addresses “the desire of the families of loved ones abducted to Gaza to know as much as possible”.
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SOURCE: www.Reuters.com
RELATED: Little food, a beating and lice: What freed Israeli hostages are saying about being held by Hamas
Retired US colonel on the key things IDF would want to learn from freed hostages
Published December 1, 2023
Around 240 people, from infants to octogenarians, were taken hostage during Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7. Dozens have been freed but many more remain missing, presumed to be held by the Palestinian militant organization and other groups in Gaza, as the warring sides resume battle.
The Red Cross and other humanitarian groups have not been allowed to visit the hostages. So relatives and the wider watching world have to wait for testimony from those who have been freed to know what might be happening to their loved ones still held in Gaza: whether they have been seen, if they are alive or dead.
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SOURCE: www.amp.cnn.com
