GAZA: Hamas’s armed wing said Saturday an Israeli woman taken hostage during the October 2023 attack had been killed in a combat zone in northern Gaza and the Israeli military said it was investigating.
Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida said contact had been restored with the woman’s captors after a break of several weeks and it was established that the hostage had been killed in an area of north Gaza where the Israeli army has been operating.
Abu Obeida’s statement did not further identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed.
The Israeli army told AFP it was looking into the claim.
Abu Obeida said that the woman had been held with a second female hostage whose life was in danger.
During last year’s Hamas attack which triggered the Gaza war, militants took 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the army says are dead.
Ten female hostages, including five soldiers, were believed to remain alive in custody before Abu Obeida’s statement, according to an AFP tally.
During a one-week truce in November last year, 105 hostages were freed, including 80 Israelis who were exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli government has come under immense public pressure to agree a new deal to bring the remaining hostages home while they are still alive.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum campaign group did not wish to comment on Saturday’s claim.
“Nothing is known other than what Hamas is saying. Our only reliable source is the Israeli army,” the group told AFP.
Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 44,176 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza
https://arab.news/8yts9
Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza
- Abu Obeida’s statement did not further identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed
- The woman had been held with a second female hostage whose life was in danger
Algeria says army kills four ‘terrorists’
The Algerian defense ministry said the army killed four “terrorists” on Sunday in a mountainous region of the northwest.
A ministry statement said the operation was still ongoing in the Djebel Amrouna area about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Algiers.
It said soldiers had “eliminated four terrorists,” and seized four Kalashnikov assault rifles and ammunition.
The army regularly announces the arrests or deaths of “terrorists,” the authorities’ term for armed Islamists still active since the North African country’s 1992-2002 civil war.
Despite a 2005 Charter for Peace and Reconciliation aimed at turning the page on the violence, armed groups continue to mount sporadic attacks.
The so-called “black decade” of the civil war officially left 200,000 people dead.
According to the defense ministry, so far this year the army has “killed 21 terrorists, captured 8 others, and 38 terrorists have repented.”
It said “369 individuals supporting terrorist groups were arrested” in the same period, and more than 100 weapons were recovered.
