Israel-Hamas war updates: Terror group warns no hostages will be released unless demands met
Hamas says Israel will not receive “their prisoners alive” if their demands are not met amid fierce fighting in Gaza’s south. Follow updates. Warning: Graphic
Hamas has warned that no hostages would leave Gaza alive unless its demands for prisoner releases are met.
In a televised statement, a Hamas spokesman said Israel will not receive “their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance.”
Senior Hamas official Bassem Neim said in late November the movement was “ready to release all soldiers in exchange for all our prisoners”.
Israel says there are still 137 hostages in Gaza, while activists say around 7000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails.
It comes as a group of more than 100 Hamas terrorists were stripped to their underwear by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) after surrendering their weapons in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, according to a video posted by an Israeli broadcaster.
Local media outlets shared the video of the men standing in line across a rubble-strewn street in Jabalya as IDF soldiers pointed automatic weapons on them and ordered them to drop their own weapons.
One man then gives his assault rifle to Israeli troops with his hands in the air, while others behind him hold up their identification cards.
“Slowly, slowly,” an IDF soldier tells the man holding the gun as he walks barefoot over rubble next to an Israeli tank.
“In Shejaiya and Jabalya, terrorists who surrendered handed over weapons and equipment,” said IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Times of Israel reported, adding that many of the men told Israeli forces that Hamas leadership underground “does not care about the public in Gaza who are above ground”.
Israeli military officials claimed that Hamas militants had been surrendering close to Gaza City in the heavily bombed Shejaiya and Jabalya neighbourhoods.
Officials alleged that the terror operatives had lost contact with Hamas leadership who are believed to have fled south and had no option but to capitulate to Israeli forces.
Rear Admiral Hagari said that interrogations of the captured operatives already provided valuable intelligence for the Israeli military and “aids us in operational activities.”
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ISRAEL STRIKES NEAR DAMASCUS
Israel carried out air strikes near Syria’s capital Damascus late Sunday local time, Syrian state news agency SANA said.
“At around 23:05 (2105 GMT) the Israeli enemy carried out an air assault … targeting various points on the outskirts of Damascus,” a security source told the agency.
“Our anti-aircraft defences shot down some missiles while others caused limited material damage.”
An AFP correspondent reported strong explosions in the suburbs of Damascus, which have been previously targeted by strikes that Syrian authorities have blamed on Israel.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the strikes had targeted “Hezbollah sites” in the Sayeda Zeinab district and near Damascus airport.
The Israeli army declined to comment on the incident, but said separately that shots had been fired from Lebanon towards northern Israel on Sunday evening.
“The army retaliated by targeting the source of the fire. Earlier in the day, we had struck a Hezbollah terrorist cell,” it said in a statement.
FIERCE FIGHTING IN KHAN YUNIS
A source close to Hamas and Islamic Jihad told AFP both groups were engaged in “fierce clashes” with Israeli forces near Khan Yunis, where an AFP journalist also reported heavy strikes, as well as Jabalya and Gaza City’s Shejaiya district in the north.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Hamas to give up.
“It is the beginning of the end of Hamas. I say to the Hamas terrorists: It’s over. Don’t die for (Yahya) Sinwar. Surrender now,” he said, referring to the Hamas chief in Gaza.
The army said it struck more than 250 targets in 24 hours, including “a Hamas military communications site”, “underground tunnel shafts” in southern Gaza, and a Hamas military command centre in Shejaiya.
It says 98 soldiers have died and around 600 wounded in the Gaza campaign.
Some 7000 “terrorists” have been killed, according to National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi.
HAMAS LEADER HIDING
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar fled northern Gaza at the beginning of the fighting in October by hiding in a humanitarian convoy heading southward, the Kan broadcaster reports.
Sinwar escaped Gaza City and headed toward south Gaza’s Khan Yunis in a vehicle that provided “humanitarian cover,” the report said, adding that more precise details of the vehicle are barred from publication at this point.
The report adds that Israel’s assessment is that Sinwar is still in Khan Yunis, or rather in one of the tunnels that run underneath it.
Earlier in the day, the IDF released video of their troops of the Nahal Infantry Brigade’s 931st Battalion battling Hamas in northern Gaza.
“The terrorists prepared an ambush in the area and were prepared to attack our forces when they would have moved through the main road,” the IDF said in a statement.
“The forces arrived through one of the alleys, behind the enemy, surprised them and fired at the terrorists.”
The IDF said the Hamas gunmen opened fire at the troops and hurled grenades.
On Friday, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told IDF soldiers that he “sees the signs indicating a breakdown is beginning inside Gaza”.
It comes as The Institute for the Study of War claimed that six of Hamas’ northern battalions are “close to collapse” and confirmed reports that terrorists were surrendering.
GAZA’S HEALTH SYSTEM ‘ON ITS KNEES’
As aid groups warn Gaza is on the brink of being overwhelmed by disease and starvation, the head of the United Nations decried a divided and “paralysed” Security Council for failing to agree on a ceasefire.
“Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing,” said World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, with only 14 of 36 hospitals functioning at any capacity.
WHO’s executive board has adopted a resolution calling for immediate, unimpeded aid deliveries.
The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced – roughly half of them children – many forced south and running out of safe places to go.
AFP visited the bombed-out ruins of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital and found at least 30,000 people taking refuge amid the rubble after Israeli forces raided the medical facility last month.
“Our life has become a living hell, there’s no electricity, no water, no flour, no bread, no medicine for the children who are all sick,” said Mohammed Daloul, 38, who fled there with his wife and three children.
‘UN CREDIBILITY UNDERMINED’
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Security Council’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined”, after the United States blocked a ceasefire resolution on Friday.
“I can promise, I will not give up,” Guterres told Qatar’s Doha Forum. Qatar, where Hamas’s top leadership is based, said it was still working on a new truce like the week-long ceasefire it helped mediate last month that saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners and humanitarian aid.
But Israel’s relentless bombardment was “narrowing the window” for success, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken again rejected a ceasefire.
“With Hamas still alive, still intact and … with the stated intent of repeating October 7 again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem,” he told ABC News on Sunday.
But Blinken also told CNN that Israeli forces should ensure “military operations are designed around civilian protection”.
ISRAEL ACCUSED OF MOVING PALESTINIANS INTO EGYPT
The Head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) voiced alarm over what he feared would be a mass expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt.
In an opinion piece Saturday in the Los Angeles Times, Philippe Lazzarini said “the developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt”.
An Israeli spokesman responded: “There is not, never was, and never will be an Israeli plan to move the residents of Gaza to Egypt.”
HAMAS ‘LOSING CONTROL’
A top Israeli commander claimed Hamas was starting to lose control over the Gaza Strip with fighters starting to “surrender”.
Israeli Defence Force Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said the military was beginning to see the collapse of Hamas’s governing system in the Gaza Strip.
“I see the achievements every day. We are seeing every day more and more terror operatives killed, more and more terror operatives wounded,” he told troops at a ceremony in Jerusalem.
“In recent days we’re seeing terrorists surrendering — a sign of the disintegration of the system, a sign that we need to push harder,” he said.
IDF OP IN GAZA’S SOUTH ‘FOR A MONTH’
According to Israeli media reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Joe Biden in a phone call over the weekend that the IDF’s current operation in southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis will go on for up to a month.
The report said the Biden administration expects the fighting in Gaza will become and more focused and less intense.
Israeli officials have denied previous reports that Mr Biden set a deadline to end fighting by the end of the year.
Washington vetoed a UN resolution that would have called for a ceasefire on Friday, a move strongly condemned by Palestinian and humanitarian groups.
Mr Netanyahu said he appreciated “the correct stance the US took” and promised to “continue our just war to eliminate Hamas”.
137 CAPTIVES REMAIN IN GAZA: ISRAEL
Israel has vowed to eradicate Hamas after its unprecedented attacks on October 7, when militants broke through Gaza’s militarised border, killed about 1200 people and seized hostages, according to Israeli officials.
Israel on Saturday said 137 captives remain in the Palestinian territory.
Hundreds of makeshift tents fashioned from scraps of fabric and plastic filled the hospital’s courtyards and garden amid collapsed walls.
Suheil Abu Dalfa, 56, from the city’s Shejaiya district, said he fled heavy bombardment by Israeli planes and tanks.
“It was madness. A shell hit the house and wounded my 20-year-old son,” he told AFP.
“We fled to the Old City, everything was just strikes and destruction … we didn’t know where to go,” he said.
“We don’t know if they will storm the hospital again.”
Alexandra Saieh, of Save the Children, spoke of “maggots being picked from wounds and children undergoing amputations without anaesthetic”.
The situation “is not just a catastrophe, it’s apocalyptic,” said Bushra Khalidi of Oxfam.
– AFP
Originally published as Israel-Hamas war updates: Terror group warns no hostages will be released unless demands met
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