(Reuters) – A member of the Hamas delegation visiting Moscow said the Palestinian group cannot release the people it took hostage during its Oct. 7 attack in Israel until it will not agree on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, reports the Russian newspaper Kommersant.
“We need time to locate all the hostages and free them,” said Abu Hamid, a member of Hamas’s political leadership, according to Kommersant.
The Islamist group said Thursday that around fifty of the approximately 220 hostages it was holding were killed in bombings carried out by the Israeli army in Gaza for three weeks.
The risks of contagion from the conflict remain significant, as illustrated on Friday by new violence in the occupied West Bank, as well as explosions of still mysterious origin in Egypt and American bombings against pro-Iranian groups in Syria.
(Writing by Reuters, editing by Kate Entringer)
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