Hamas vows to hold hostages

AFP | Jerusalem                                               

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Hamas vowed yesterday it would not release the hostages it seized during its October 7 attack on Israel until the Gaza war ends, as it mourned the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar.

“We mourn the great leader, the martyred brother, Yahya Sinwar, Abu Ibrahim,” Qatar-based Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said in a recorded video statement.

The hostages “will not return... unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops, there is a complete withdrawal from it, and our heroic prisoners are released from the occupation’s prisons,” he added.

Hamas’s confirmation of the death of Sinwar, the mastermind of the deadliest attack in Israeli history, came a day after Israel dealt a massive blow to the group with the announcement of his death.

Hamas sparked the year-long war in Gaza by staging the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures. During the attack, gunmen took 251 people hostage back into Gaza.

Ninety-seven remain there, including 34 who Israeli officials say are dead.

Chief of Hamas in Gaza at the time of the attack, Sinwar became the group’s overall leader after the killing in July of its political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.

In Gaza, there was little hope Sinwar’s killing would bring an end to the war. “We always thought that when this moment arrived the war would end and our lives would return to normal,” Jemaa Abou Mendi, a 21-year-old Gaza resident, told AFP.

“But unfortunately, the reality on the ground is quite the opposite. The war has not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”

Air strikes Israel conducted air strikes on Gaza yesterday, with several raids overnight and early morning pummelling the territory, according to an AFP journalist on the ground.

According to Gaza’s civil defence agency, rescuers recovered the bodies of three Palestinian children from the rubble of their home in the north of the territory after it was hit at dawn.

The Israeli military said it was pressing its operation in Jabalia, one of the focuses of the fighting in recent weeks, and where strikes on Thursday killed at least 14 people, according to two hospitals. A UN-backed assessment has found some 345,000 Gazans face “catastrophic” levels of hunger this winter.

Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas and bring back the hostages seized by gunmen has killed 42,500 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the UN considers reliable.

With the civilian toll in Gaza mounting, Israel has faced criticism over its conduct of the war, including from the United States.

Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi vowed to keep fighting “until we capture all the parties involved in the October 7 massacre and bring all the hostages home”.

With Hamas already weakened more than a year into the Gaza war, Sinwar’s death deals an immense blow to the organisation, but whether it will trigger a shift in its own strategy is unclear.

It is also unclear whether his successor will be named in Qatar, where Hamas’s political leadership has long been based, or in Gaza, the focus of the fighting.

The Israeli military said Sinwar was killed in a firefight in southern Gaza’s Rafah, near the Egyptian border, while being tracked by a drone.

It released drone footage of what it said was Sinwar’s final moments, with the video showing a wounded individual throwing an object at the drone.

Israel is also fighting a war in Lebanon, where Hamas ally Hezbollah opened a front by launching cross-border strikes that forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes.