Ariane Menage with AFP // Photo credit: AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP
Islamic Jihad released a video on Monday of a living Israeli hostage, held in the Gaza Strip since the October 7 attack on Israeli soil. In this video, the Israeli, speaking in English and Hebrew, specifies that he is speaking on January 5. He asks the Israeli authorities to work for his release and to work on an exchange with Palestinian prisoners.
Islamic Jihad released a video on Monday of a living Israeli hostage, one of 132 still held in the Gaza Strip since the October 7 attack on Israeli soil. In this video from the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, the Israeli, speaking in English and Hebrew, specifies that he is speaking on January 5. He asks the Israeli authorities to work for his release and to work on an exchange with Palestinian prisoners.
The family of the hostage, captured at Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, asked the media not to broadcast the video. Around 75 people were kidnapped in this kibbutz near the Gaza Strip. Unprecedented in its violence and scale, the October 7 attack perpetrated by the Islamist commandos of Hamas, in which its ally Islamic Jihad participated, left around 1,140 dead in Israel, mostly civilians, according to a count by the ‘AFP based on the latest official Israeli figures available.
The war continues in Gaza
Some 250 people were taken hostage by the two Palestinian Islamist movements, among whom 132 are still being held in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities. According to Israel, several of them died and their bodies are still in the territory.
In retaliation for the October 7 attack, the Israeli authorities shelled the Gaza Strip where Hamas took power in 2007 and have been carrying out ground operations there since October 27. Since the outbreak of war, 23,084 people, mostly women, children and adolescents, have been killed in the small Palestinian territory, according to the latest toll announced Monday by the Hamas government.