The Hamas militant group posted a new video showing hostages in Gaza, urging the Israeli military to stand down and stop its assault on the Palestinian Islamist group and work to bring them home.
The footage comes as the conflict between the two sides enters its 100th day and no information was available as to when the video was taken. The short 37-second clip showed 26-year-old Noa Argamani, 53-year-old Yossi Sharabi, and 38-year-old Itai Svirsky.
The three hostages all ended the video with the chyron: "Tomorrow we will inform you of their fate." On Sunday, the militant group said that it had lost contact with some hostages as Israeli forces continued to shell Gaza.
The group noted that they could have been killed in the process of the Israeli military's assault on the region. At the outset of the war, Hamas also threatened to execute hostages in retaliation for Israeli military strikes.
Officials from Israel have generally declined to respond to the militant group's public messaging regarding the hostages in Gaza. They have considered such situations as psychological warfare, as per Reuters.
A forensic official with Israel's Health Ministry, Hagar Mizrahi said on Dec. 31 that autopsies of killed hostages who were recovered found causes of death to be inconsistent with Hamas' account, which noted that they died in air strikes.
However, Israel has also made clear that it is aware of the risks to hostages due to its offensive on Gaza and said that it is taking necessary precautions. In a statement on Sunday, chief armed forces spokesperson Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari said that the military operation takes time. He noted that it obligates them to be precise.
Out of the roughly 240 people who were taken hostage by Hamas during the militant group's Oct. 7 assault, about half have been released during a truce in November. Israeli noted that there are still 132 captives in Gaza, adding that 25 of them have died while in captivity.
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Israel's Offensive in Gaza
The current hostage crisis has riveted Israelis who were already shocked by the war with Hamas. Furthermore, some relatives of the captives have called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enter another ceasefire agreement or even call off the war entirely, according to the South China Morning Post.
However, Netanyahu has vowed to continue to fight Hamas until the militant group is destroyed, which he argued would free the hostages. The prime minister said in parliament last month that he had already asked Beijing to help free Argamani, whose mother Liora is Chinese.
The hostage's mother is known to be suffering from a terminal illness and she has appealed to be reunited with her daughter before she dies. Naama Weinberg, a relative of one of the hostages in the recent video, said that the captives' families were "frustrated and suffocating."
He added that there has been no progress towards the release of the hostages in the last few weeks. Weinberg also said that nothing was moving forward except for them finding out that more hostages have lost their lives while in captivity, said CNN.
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