Radical Islamist Hamas took 199 people hostage in its massive attack on Israel more than a week ago and deported them to the Gaza Strip. “We have informed the families of 199 hostages,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters on Monday. On Sunday, Israel reported the number of hostages kidnapped at 155.
The hostages also include foreigners and people with dual nationalities. “The effort to reach the hostages is a national priority,” Hagari said. “The army and Israel are working around the clock to recover them.”
When asked how the fact that so many hostages are being held in the coastal strip affects Israeli attacks there, the army spokesman replied: “Our targets are based on intelligence.” They know exactly what they are attacking there, namely the infrastructure of the ruling Hamas and the organization’s high-ranking members.
At the same time, Hagari reiterated that Hamas was preventing people from moving to safe locations from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, as instructed by Israel. “Unfortunately, Hamas is using its people as a shield and civilians are being killed,” Hagari said.
Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents have already moved to the southern part of the coastal strip, the spokesman said. The United Nations criticized Israel’s evacuation order and warned of a humanitarian catastrophe. “Tremendous efforts” are being made to use intelligence information to find out exactly where hostages are being held in the Gaza Strip, Hagari said. There will be no attacks “that put our people in danger”. Hamas said hostages were killed in the airstrikes. This cannot be independently verified.
As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip seek protection from an expected Israeli ground offensive, Israel’s air force says it continues to bomb Hamas targets. The Israeli military announced on Monday morning that attacks in the Gaza Strip had continued over the past 24 hours. As the Ynet news website reported, citing the Palestinians, these were the worst attacks to date. Israel’s air force has been carrying out counterattacks in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas terrorist attacks ten days ago that left more than 1,400 people dead.
The army once again appealed to the population of the north of the Gaza Strip and Gaza City to flee to the south of the coastal area. The army will not attack a corresponding escape corridor between 8am and 12pm (7am and 11am CEST), an army spokesperson said in Arabic on platform X (formerly Twitter). He published a map with a marked route.
The death toll in the Gaza Strip has now risen to 2,750. Some 9,700 people were injured, the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip said on Monday. Meanwhile, the Israeli military is preparing a possible ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of thousands of reservists are deployed on the border with Gaza.
According to Egyptian security sources, the US, Egypt and Israel have agreed to a ceasefire for the southern Gaza Strip. The start was scheduled for 8am (CEST), people familiar with the matter said, according to Portal news agency. This will be accompanied by the opening of the Rafah border crossing in Egypt until Monday afternoon at 16:00 (CEST). However, Israel denied a ceasefire for the southern Gaza Strip. “There is currently no ceasefire or humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the evacuation of foreigners,” said a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. The radical Islamic group Hamas said it was not aware of a ceasefire for humanitarian purposes.