About half of the roughly 100 hostages held in the Gaza Strip since last year are still alive, Israeli media have quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying.
Netanyahu spoke about this during a meeting of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Security Committee in Jerusalem, according to media reports on Sunday. There was no official confirmation of this, as it was a closed session.
Terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups killed more than 1,200 people in Israel on October 7 and took about 250 as hostage to the Gaza, triggering the ongoing war.
During a ceasefire at the end of November, Hamas released 105 hostages. In return, Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners. Indirect negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of more hostages have so far been unsuccessful.
Individual hostages have since been freed by the Israeli military, while several have been found dead. Experts and observers have long believed that many of the hostages still in the Gaza Strip are no longer alive.
Earlier on Sunday, Palestinian medical officials said at least seven people were killed and others injured in an Israeli attack on a former school building in the north of the Gaza Strip. The general director of the Hamas-controlled housing ministry was among the dead, medical sources said.
The Israeli military said it had carried out a precision attack on terrorists making use of the former school to mount attacks.
“This is a further example of the Hamas terrorist organization’s systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law,” the IDF wrote on its Telegram channel. It said Israeli forces had taken a number of measures to reduce danger to civilians but “will continue to act against terrorist organizations that use schools and civilian institutions as shelter.”
The information from both sides could not be independently verified.