The Hamas video also feautres a female hostage who says she survived two Israeli airstrikes that killed her fellow captives
On Monday, the Ezzeldin Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, broadcasted a new video that allegedly shows the corpses of two Israeli hostages, Yossi Sharabi and Itai Svirsky, who were kidnapped by the Islamist group.
The video also features a third Israeli hostage, Noa Argamani, who is still alive and says that the two men died as a result of “our own attacks by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)”, the official name of the Israeli army.
Argamani’s testimony, which has not been independently confirmed, indicates that the two men were killed in two different Israeli airstrikes.
She narrates that they were in a building with some Al Qassam fighters and three hostages when “two missiles exploded and one did not”. She says that she and Svirsky were pulled out of the debris, but Sharabi could not be rescued.
She then says that they were moved to another location, but Svirsky succumbed to his injuries during the transfer due to another Israeli bombing.
Argamani pleads with the Israeli government to “stop this madness and take us home to our families”.
The three hostages were abducted by Hamas in different circumstances. Noa, 26, was taken from the Reim festival and recorded while she was being driven on a motorcycle to the Gaza Strip. Itay, 38, from Tel Aviv, was seized while he was visiting his family at Kibbutz Beeri, where his parents, Orit and Rafi Svirski, were slain. Yossi, 53, also from Beeri, was snatched from his house.
The previous night, Hamas had released an earlier video in which the three hostages were seen alive. In the footage, the captives appealed to the Israeli authorities in Hebrew to negotiate for their release.
The militant group said that it would reveal more details on Monday about the situation and location of the hostages who appeared in the video.
Moreover, Abu Ubaida, the spokesman of Hamas’ armed wing, said on Sunday that the fate of many Israeli hostages was uncertain.
In his first televised appearance in several weeks, on the 100th day of the war, Ubaida estimated that many of the hostages “may have been killed” and held Israel responsible for their fate.
He said that any dialogue before stopping Israeli aggression was futile.
On the other hand, Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, said at a press conference on Monday that only military pressure on Hamas would lead to a new deal on the hostages.
He warned that if the hostilities stopped, the fate of the hostages would be “sealed for many years in Hamas captivity”. He said that without military pressure, no one would talk to them. He said that only from a position of strength could the hostages be freed.
He vowed to “reach (all the hostages) and defeat Hamas” and said that both their enemies and their allies would “look at the results and test us”.
