The Ezzedine Al-Qassam brigades, an army branch of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, published a video on Saturday afternoon showing what seems to be an injured Israeli hostage, detained in the Gaza Strip.
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In this document of more than four minutes, of which AFP was not able to immediately confirm authenticity, appears an elongated man, the skull and the left arm covered with bandages with brown spots.
Speaking Hebrew, the man presents himself as “prisoner number 24” and suggests that he was injured in an Israeli bombardment.
He also refers to the fact that Israel will soon celebrate the anniversary of his independence, suggesting that the video was shot shortly before May 1, when the Hebrew State celebrated according to the Jewish calendar the 77th anniversary of its creation, May 15, 1948.
After two months of truce with Hamas in Gaza and several weeks of unsuccessful negative negotiations on how to extend it, Israel resumed on March 18 its air bombings followed by land operations in the territory, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirming that military pressure is the only way to force Hamas to release the hostages it still has.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023 by commandos 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 retained 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.
Since the end of the truce, Hamas has published several hostage videos. These new images are disseminated while the indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel via the mediation of Qatar and Egypt for the release of hostages and a cease-fire in Gaza trampled.
