The Ezzed Al-Qassam brigades, an armed branch of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, published a video on Saturday, May 3, which shows what seems to be an injured Israeli hostage, arrested in the Gaza Strip.
In this document of more than four minutes, of which AFP could not immediately confirm authenticity, it looks like an elongated man, the left skull and arm covered with bandages with brown points.
Hebrew speaking with a Russian accent, the man presents himself as “prisoner number 24” and suggests that he was injured in an Israeli bombing.
It also refers to the fact that Israel will soon celebrate the birthday of its independence, which suggests that the video was filmed shortly before May 1, when the Hebrew State celebrated according to the Jewish calendar the 77th anniversary of its creation, May 15, 1948.
251 eliminated people
After two months of truce with Hamas in Gaza and several weeks of negative negotiations without success on how to extend it, Israel resumed on March 18 its aerial bombings followed by land operations in the territory, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating that military pressure is the only way to force Hamas to free the requirements it still has.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023 by commands of Hamas infiltrated in southern Israel from the neighboring Gaza Strip, where the Islamist movement took power in 2007.
Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 58 are still held in Gaza, 34 of which were declared dead by the Israeli army. Hamas also retains the body of an Israeli soldier killed in a previous war in Gaza in 2014.
From the end of the truce, Hamas has published several hostage videos. These new images are spread while indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel through the mediation of Qatar and Egypt for the release of hostages and a high fire in Gaza trampled.
The Israeli military retaliation campaign for the attack of October 7, left at least 52,495 dead in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Ministry of Health of Hamas, considered reliable by the UN.
Source: BFM TV
