Israel-Hamas war: Hamas appears to show dead bodies of two hostages after warning Israel
The militant group has released footage showing the dead bodies of two Israeli hostages after warning Israel they might be killed if it did not stop its bombardment of Gaza. Follow updates.
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Hamas has said that two of the hostages captured on October 7 have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and released images that appeared to show their bodies.
The video included clips — apparently recorded earlier — of the two hostages who it claimed were killed, Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, speaking while looking into a video camera, and then showed video apparently showing their bodies.
It included narration by the hostage who reportedly survived, Noa Argamani, 26, who told of her companions’ deaths and described being wounded, herself.
A previous video, released on Sunday, showed the three hostages identifying themselves by name and age, and ended with a caption that read: “Tomorrow we will inform you of their fate.”
Another video, released early Monday, featured headshots of the three hostages and said, “Tonight we will inform you of their fate.”
In a third video that announced the two deaths, Ms Argamani addressed a camera while seated against a white background.
In the last of the three videos, Ms Argamani said that she had been in a building with the two others when it was hit by three missiles fired by an Israeli warplane, with two exploding and burying them under rubble. She said that Hamas fighters dug her and Mr Svirsky out but that Mr Sharabi had been killed.
She said that two nights later, she and M Svirsky had been relocated to another location. En route, Mr Svirsky was killed by an Israeli strike, she said, and she received shrapnel wounds to her head and body.
Chief spokesman for the Israeli military Daniel Hagari said at a press briefing said they are investigating the alleged deaths.
Hagari, while not confirming the deaths, said that “in recent days,” the military had met with the men’s families “and expressed grave concern for their fate, due to information available to us.”
“We are investigating the event and its circumstances, examining the images distributed by Hamas, alongside additional information at our disposal,” he said.
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MOTHER OF KILLED HOSTAGE DOES NOT BLAME IDF
otam Haim was gunned down in Gaza by Israeli soldiers who failed to realise he had escaped from his Hamas captors - yet his mother refuses to criticise the army.
Iris Haim, 57, feels the same way now as she did a month ago, when she sent an extraordinary message to the army unit involved in her son’s killing.
“I have no anger, I understand the difficult situation you were in, I love and admire you,” she wrote just after the killing in a message that went viral after a soldier posted it on social media.
Haim later read it out in public, all of which made her a hero to many Israelis. “I’m not into accusations and retroactive interrogations,” she told AFP this week.
“I can’t bring Yotam back, but I can choose to see things in a positive way.” Yotam, 28, and two other hostages were killed by Israeli soldiers who mistakenly thought them to be a threat, the army said after an investigation into the shooting.
ISRAEL TO WIND DOWN WAR IN SOUTHERN GAZA
Israel has said its operations against Hamas in southern Gaza will soon enter a less intensive phase, after the militant group’s health ministry reported the death toll in the territory had surpassed 24,000.
More than 100 days into the war, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under intense international pressure to end the fighting as civilian deaths soar and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens.
At the same time, deadly violence in the occupied West Bank, exchanges of fire over Israel’s border with Lebanon, and strikes by US forces on Iran-backed Yemeni rebels acting in solidarity with Hamas have all raised fears of an escalation beyond the Gaza Strip.
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Monday reiterated calls for a stop in the combat, saying: “We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire 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 -- because the longer the conflict in Gaza continues, the greater the risk of escalation and miscalculation.”
UN AGENCIES APPEAL FOR ‘FASTER, SAFER AID ACCESS’
In a joint statement by the World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF, the World Health Organization and UNRWA, they said the quantities of aid reaching residents of the enclave “fall far short of what is needed to prevent a deadly combination of hunger, malnutrition, and disease.”
The appeal comes after a UN analysis confirmed that the entire population of Gaza are facing at least crisis levels of food insecurity.
The agencies called on Israel to use Ashdod port, which is roughly 40 kilometers to the north of Gaza, to allow in more aid. It also called on authorities to open more crossings into the enclave, while allowing in commercial traffic.
“People in Gaza are suffering from a lack of food, water, medicines and adequate healthcare. Famine will make an already terrible situation catastrophic because sick people are more likely to succumb to starvation and starving people are more vulnerable to disease”, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said.
“We need unimpeded, safe access to deliver aid and a humanitarian ceasefire to prevent further death and suffering.”
ONE DEAD, 18 INJURED IN CAR RAMMING ATTACK
A woman has been killed and 17 people injured in a suspected car ramming in central Israel.
Police said two suspects stole vehicles and ran over a number of people in different areas of Raanana, a city north of Tel Aviv, on Monday.
Footage from one of the sites showed a white car with its front crumpled against a lamp-post next to a bus stop.
Dozens of police and medics were on the scene at the cordoned-off street, and heavily armed security forces carried out searches nearby.
Medics from the Magen David Adom emergency service said 17 people were injured, including two seriously, with the rest sustaining less serious injuries.
Meir hospital near Raanana confirmed one woman had died. “A wounded woman who arrived in a critical condition after having been hit by a vehicle has died of her injuries despite our efforts to save her,” the hospital said in a statement.
The attackers, have been identified as two West Bank Palestinians working in Israel illegally and had been blacklisted previously, so it’s unclear how they were allowed in.
PENNY WONG HEADS TO MIDDLE EAST
Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong is due in Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and the United Arab Emirates this week to “support international diplomatic efforts towards a durable peace in the Middle East”, her office said.
The visit comes as Australians whose loved ones are still being held captive by Hamas or were killed in the October 7 terror attacks expressed dismay that Australia’s top diplomat would avoid visiting the massacre sites in southern Israel.
Senator Wong left Adelaide on Monday for her week-long tour of the Middle East, having decided to not visit the southern Israeli towns and kibbutzes invaded by Hamas.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese side-stepped the issue and said “Penny Wong’s itinerary is a matter for her”.
“We are not a central player in the Middle East, but we are a respected voice, and this visit is about us being able to express our voice and for Penny Wong to see first-hand and to have those discussions face to face,” he told ABC.
It comes as international efforts to avoid escalation of the war saw China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visiting Egypt, where he called for “an international summit for peace” and Palestinian statehood.
Israel has faced international pressure over surging civilian casualties in Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under intense domestic pressure to account for political and security failings surrounding the October 7 attacks.
HAMAS RELEASES CHILLING HOSTAGE VIDEO
Noa Argamani, one of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, has appeared in a video alongside two other hostages.
The 26-year-old woman was last pictured crying with her arms outstretched on the back of a motorcycle as Hamas militants took her from the Nova music festival she and several other young people had attended. She was there with her boyfriend, whose whereabouts has not been confirmed.
The undated 37-second video aired by Hamas today featured Argamani, Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38.
All three hostages called on Israel to stop the airstrikes and ground offensive on Gaza.
At the end of the video, these chilling words appeared on screen: “Tomorrow we will inform you of their fate.”
Hamas captured 250 hostages on October 7 and killed 1200 people.
In November last year, 100 hostages were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners amid a temporary truce.
There are still 132 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli officials called the video ‘psychological warfare’.
WAR ENTERS 100TH DAY
The Israel-Hamas war reached a grim milestone of 100 days on Sunday, with more civilian deaths in Gaza, and relatives of dozens of hostages still awaiting their freedom.
There were also casualties in the West Bank, and on the Israel-Lebanon border. The conflict, sparked by unprecedented attacks on Israel, has created a humanitarian catastrophe for the 2.4 million people in Hamas-ruled Gaza, the United Nations and aid groups warn, and reduced much of the coastal strip to rubble.
The UN says roughly 85 percent of the territory’s population have been displaced - crowded into shelters and struggling to get food, water, fuel and medical care.
“It’s been 100 days and our situation is very bad,” said Mohammad Kahil, displaced to Rafah, in southern Gaza near Egypt, from the territory’s north. “There’s no food, no water, no heating. We are dying from the cold.”
Violence involving Iran-aligned groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria has surged since the war in Gaza began in early October.
While a wider conflagration has so far been averted, fears increased following US and British strikes on scores of Yemeni rebel targets Friday.
Undeterred, the Huthis have vowed more attacks in solidarity with Gaza against what they deem Israeli-linked Red Sea shipping.
The Hamas government media office said Sunday that “more than 100 people were martyred in the attacks last night until 6:00 am in all areas of the Gaza Strip”.
Among those killed was Yazan al-Zwaidi, a video-journalist for Cairo-based Al Ghad television, “murdered by Israeli fire”, the station said on X, formerly Twitter.
HAMAS SAYS GAZA DEATHS HAVE TOPPED 24,000
Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza report more than 24,000 deaths in the war with Israel.
The health ministry in Gaza, ruled by Hamas since 2007, reported more than 60 “martyrs” and dozens more wounded overnight, in what the group’s media office described as “intense” Israeli bombardment across Gaza.
The Hamas government media office said two hospitals, a girls’ school and “dozens” of homes were hit overnight.
The latest strikes hit the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, as well as areas around Gaza City, the Hamas media office said.
The army said its forces had struck “two terrorists loading weapons into a vehicle” in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, and raided “a Hamas command centre” there and seized weapons.
‘LIVING IN HELL’: GAZA FAMINE LOOMS
The UN says more than three months of fighting have displaced roughly 85 percent of the territory’s population, crowded into shelters and struggling to get food, water, fuel and medical care.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said diseases were spreading with “the clock ticking fast towards famine”.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said people in Gaza were “living in hell”, echoing earlier UN warnings of a fast-approaching famine.
In a joint statement on Sunday, the WHO, World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF said “a fundamental step change in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is urgently needed”.
They called for “safer, faster” supply routes to be opened, warning that the current levels of aid “fall far short of what is needed to prevent a deadly combination of hunger, malnutrition and disease”.
The WFP said an aid convoy brought food to the territory’s north on Thursday, the first such delivery since a one-week truce ended on December 1.
Cindy McCain, the UN agency’s director, said: “People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food. Every hour puts countless lives at risk.”
- with AFP
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