Hamas claimed Sunday that it had lost contact with two hostages during Israeli operations in a pair of Gaza City neighborhoods, as three Israel Defense Forces divisions moved deeper into the northern city in a bid to conquer it.
In a statement, the terror group’s al-Qassam Brigades armed wing said it had demanded that the IDF “withdraw to the south of Street Eight (one of the streets in Gaza City) and halt aerial sorties for 24 hours starting at 6 p.m. today so that attempts can be made to extract the prisoners (hostages).”
The statement’s apparent indication of the hostages’ exact location is unprecedented.
Both hostages were abducted in the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement that their families were working with authorities to review the Hamas statement, and asked that the names of their loved ones not be made public.
Families of captives have repeatedly raised concerns that the military’s push into Gaza City — which the government has said is necessary to defeat remaining Hamas forces — could endanger hostages held in the area.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Among the bodies held by Hamas is also an IDF officer killed in Gaza in 2014.
The Hamas statement came after the IDF said the air force over the past day struck some 140 targets, including buildings used by terror groups, operatives, and other infrastructure, while medical sources in the Hamas-run Strip reported at least 77 killed by Israel over the past 24 hours.
As Israeli tanks moved deeper into Gaza City’s residential districts on Sunday, local health authorities said they have been unable to respond to dozens of desperate calls, expressing concern about the fate of residents in the targeted areas. Witnesses and medics said the tanks had deepened their incursions in the Sabra, Tel Al-Hawa, Sheikh Radwan, and Al-Naser neighborhoods, closing in on the heart and the western areas of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of people are sheltering.
Israel has instructed Gaza City residents to flee ahead of the offensive there. The military said Friday some 780,000 of roughly 1 million residents had fled so far, while Hamas’s government media office put the number closer to 190,000.
In one incident in Gaza City, troops of the Golani Brigade spotted a cell of five Hamas fighters that launched RPGs at a building where the forces were stationed, the IDF said. No injuries were caused in the attack, and the troops then directed a drone strike to kill the gunmen, according to the military.
Meanwhile, the IDF said 98th Division forces have “deepened their operational control” of Gaza City, and in the past day directed strikes on Hamas sites and operatives.
Israel’s ground troops also pressed on in southern Gaza, with forces from the IDF’s Gaza Division killing terror operatives and destroying Hamas infrastructure, including surveillance equipment, in the Strip’s south, the military said.
Israel recently approached two large Gaza City clans about forming anti-Hamas enclaves in the city, and, after being turned down, bombed homes that belong to them, according to a report in the Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat on Sunday.
The outlet said the Shin Bet approached representatives of the Durmush and Bakr families, both of which have remained in Gaza City, about implementing a plan to divide the city into zones controlled by armed groups supported by Israel.
According to the report, which cited security sources and contacts on the ground in Gaza, the Durmush and Bakr families rejected the offer, which would have required them to fight Hamas and pass intelligence to Israel.
The proposed scheme appeared to be similar to a model implemented with armed groups carving out anti-Hamas enclaves in Gaza’s south that claim support from Israel.
A member of the Bakr family, who asked not to be named, confirmed the details to the paper.
According to the sources cited by Asharaq Al-Awsat, the families rejected the offer on Friday. On Saturday, Israel struck several houses belonging to members of the families in Gaza City, killing about 36 people, the report said.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 66,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it had killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March 2024, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May 2024 as a “gesture” to the United States.
The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 51 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.