GAZA: Hamas on Monday released a video it said showed three women from the more than 230 people Israel says were abducted by militants and taken to Gaza during the October 7 attacks.
The Palestinian Islamist group referred to the women in the 76-second video as “Zionist detainees” but it was not immediately possible to verify their identities.
Sitting on plastic chairs against a white tile wall, one of the women urges Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree a prisoner exchange for the release of all captives.
Speaking in Hebrew, she becomes very agitated and starts shouting, almost screaming by the end, as the other two sitting either side of her remain silent.
The hostages were seized when hundreds of Hamas gunmen stormed across the border into southern Israel and attacked kibbutz communities, towns and military bases. Their ages range between a few months and more than 80 years old.
Authorities believe they are being held in a giant network of underground tunnels built by Hamas in the besieged territory.
Israel says 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were killed in the worst attacks in Israel’s history, prompting its forces to unleash the current Gaza war.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 8,300 people, mainly civilians — and more than half women and children — have been killed in Israeli air and ground strikes.
The Israeli government made no immediate comment on the video.
Facing growing domestic pressure over the detainees, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday accused the militants of playing “psychological games” over the hostages’ fate.
On October 16, Hamas released a video showing Israeli-French hostage Mia Shem.
Hamas releases video it says shows Gaza women hostages
https://arab.news/razjn
Hamas releases video it says shows Gaza women hostages
- Palestinian Islamist group referred to the women in the 76-second video as “Zionist detainees”
Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe
RAQQA: Baghdad on Friday urged European states to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who fought for Daesh, and who are now being moved to Iraq from detention camps in Syria.
Europeans were among 150 Daesh prisoners transferred so far by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria. They were among an estimated 7,000 militants due to be moved across the border to Iraq as the Kurdish-led force that has held them for years relinquishes swaths of territory to the advancing Syrian army.
In a telephone call on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said European countries should take back and prosecute their nationals.
An Iraqi security official said the 150 so far transferred to Iraq were “all leaders of the Daesh group, and some of the most notorious criminals.” They included “Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis,” he said.
Another Iraqi security source said the group comprised “85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region.”
They all took part in Daesh operations in Iraq, he said, and were now being held at a prison in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces jailed thousands of militant fighters and detained tens of thousands of their relatives in camps as it pushed out Daesh in 2019 after five years of fighting.
