Hamas has released a video announcing the death of two Israeli hostages and claimed that they were killed by Israeli airstrikes.
The video showed a female hostage named in Israeli media as Noa Argamani, 26, speaking under duress, revealing that two men she was held captive with had been killed in captivity. It was not clear when or where the video was filmed and there was no independent confirmation of Hamas’s claims.
The three hostages were shown in a 37-second Hamas video released on Sunday in which the group urged the Israeli government to halt its aerial and ground offensive and bring about their release. The undated clip ended with the caption: “Tomorrow [Monday] we will inform you of their fate.”
In a statement released with the new video, Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades, said the two men, believed to be Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itay Svirsky, 38, had been killed in “the Zionist army’s bombing”.
The IDF responded with the following message:
Israel’s conduct has been absolutely deplorable and indefensible from the moment they started indiscriminately bombing civilian homes. That doesn’t make it ok to mock the deaths of innocent people, regardless of the circumstances.
I’m not mocking any deaths I’m mocking the IDF and their preposterous “bomb the hostages to safety” method
Also known as the Hannibal Directive.