As pressure is mounting on Hamas to release the hostages including foreigners it abducted after the horrific terror on Israel on 7 October, the Islamic terror group has come up with a bizarre excuse to delay the release. A Hamas leader has said that they need time to find hostages hidden in various places in the Gaza Strip.
A member of a Hamas delegation that visited Russia for talks claimed this while talking to Russia’s semi-official news outlet Kommersant. A Hamas official named Abu Hamid said that the group has always been willing to release civilians, but “needs time to find them.”
Abu Hamid claimed that various groups of Hamas are holding the hostages, and a ceasefire by Israel is needed to allow Hamas to carry out a search, find the hostages, and release them. It is notable that Israel has continued with airstrikes targeting Hamas sites in Gaza, and preparing for a massive ground operation.
“Hundreds of citizens and dozens of militants from various Palestinian factions entered the territories occupied in 1948, and after the fall of the Israeli Gaza Division, they captured dozens of people, most of them civilians, and we need time to find them in the Gaza Strip and then release them,” he said.
He also claimed that the Israeli bombing has killed 50 hostages so far, saying that a calm environment is needed to find the hostages and release them.
Earlier Iran had said that Hamas is willing to release the hostages if Israel ends airstrikes on Gaza. On 16th October, the Iranian Foreign Ministry claimed that Hamas ‘potentially’ was ready to release the nearly 200 Israeli and other foreign nationals it has held hostage if Israel stops airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
Abu Hamid also said that in the meeting with Moscow, the Hamas delegation presented to the ‘Russian friends the reasons for the October 7 attack’.
A group of high-ranking members of Hamas arrived in Moscow on Thursday and held talks with senior Russian officials. The Hamas delegation led by Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior official of the group that runs the Gaza Strip, met with Mikhail Bogdanov, the Russian deputy foreign minister.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani was also in Moscow on Thursday and participated in a trilateral meeting in Moscow on October 26 with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Putin’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov, and Hamas head of international relations Mousa Abu Marzouk.
Hostages are kept in tunnels
It is believed that Hamas has kept the hostages in the vast network of tunnels that it has built under the Gaza Strip over decades. 85-year-old Israeli woman Yocheved Lifshitz, who was held captive and then released by Hamas on 24 October, has said that she was kept in tunnels under Gaza. She said that the Hamas tunnels are like a spider web, saying that she went through hell. She further said after entering the tunnel, they walked for hours.
From her comments, it has been confirmed that most of the hostages are kept in tunnels under Gaza by Hamas. The tunnels also house rocket launchers and weapons of Hamas and provide shelter for the terrorists. As per an estimate, there are around 300 miles of tunnels under Gaza, some of which extend into Israel and Egypt. It is estimated that the tunnel network cost approximately $2 billion to build, most of which are made of pre-fab concrete structures.
It is said that Hamas basically has an underground city under Gaza City, comprising tunnels which are around 150 feet deep. In recent years, with the improvement in detection technology, Israel has been destroying tunnels that extend into its territory. Egypt has also blocked the Hamas tunnels that entered its territory.
Although Israel has the capability to destroy deep tunnels using airstrikes, many of the tunnels are under residential areas.
The tunnels under Gaza make a ground invasion by Israel extremely difficult. The network of tunnels is vast, complex, almost impossible to map out and difficult to enter and exit. Experts believe that due to this reason, Hamas could be able to extend the conflict by taking time to take out hostages from the tunnel network.
