Hamas says it does not have 40 hostages requested by Israel to conclude ceasefire

A statement which revives conjectures about the fate of the hostages in Gaza. Hamas said it was currently unable to locate the 40 hostages whose release Israel is demanding as part of negotiations for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. This information, relayed by several media including CNN, comes from a senior Israeli official and another source close to the matter. It raises fears that the number of hostages still alive may be lower than expected.

The latest ceasefire proposal mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt has not yet received the approval of the Palestinian movement or Israel. It initially provides for a six-week truce as well as the release of 42 hostages held in Gaza, including all women as well as sick and elderly men. Hamas told international mediators that it did not hold 40 living hostages meeting these criteria for release, indicate the two sources cited by CNN. In exchange, Hamas must obtain the release of 800 to 900 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, the entry of 400 to 500 trucks of humanitarian aid each day into the Gaza Strip and the return home of residents of the north of the territory displaced by war, according to a Hamas source.

“Part of the negotiations is to reach a ceasefire agreement in order to have sufficient time and security to collect definitive and more precise data on captured Israelis,” Bassem Naïm, a senior security official, said in a statement. members of the Hamas leadership. According to him, the captives “are in different places in the hands of different groups. Some of them are under the rubble, killed with our own citizens.” He added that the movement was negotiating “heavy equipment” to locate them.

At the beginning of March, Hamas declared that it did not know "who is alive or dead" among the hostages held in the Gaza Strip since the bloody attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern Israel on October 7. More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain detained in Gaza, including 34 who have died, according to Israeli officials.

“Hamas is studying the offer,” a spokesperson for the Islamist movement repeated on Wednesday, while a spokesperson for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, accused Hamas on Thursday of “turning its back” on “an offer very reasonable. Another senior member of the Islamist movement, Taher al-Nounou, said Thursday that “what was offered to us during the last round of negotiations regarding the ceasefire does not meet our demands.” He noted that Israeli demands for “a temporary ceasefire and the maintenance of their forces in the Gaza Strip” were points of disagreement in the ongoing discussions.