Hamas has indicated it is currently unable to identify and track down 40 Israeli hostages needed for the first phase of a ceasefire deal, according to an Israeli official and a source familiar with the discussions, raising fears that more hostages may be dead than are publicly known.
I am not here to give Israel a W, but Hamas still has a number of civilian captives from the original October 7 attack. Just not as many surviving as was assumed.
According to Israel’s own figures, there are 90 or so living hostages and 30 or so bodies still held by Hamas IIRC. Apparently most of the 90 survivors are non-civilians, based on what Hamas is saying, but some of them still are.
But not according to anyone else’s…
Israel has been flattening the entire area, they can’t keep track of how many they kill, regardless of what country they’re from.
But the article OP linked even says there aren’t 40 noncombatants left…
I’m not sure what you’re not understanding about this.
Or why you’re listening to Israel still
Right, I acknowledged that. It’s just that no one knows who specifically is counted in the alive vs dead hostage statistics. It wouldn’t surprise me if Israel purposefully set a number of civilians that they knew had likely already died, knowing that Hamas would not be able to comply with the request, to justify continuing the conflict.
Therein lies the problem.
I would say take it with a grain of salt, but there’s enough international scrutiny that I would say the list of missing is probably reliable enough. People in Israel are still protesting the Israeli government about that very frequently. Not everyone missing from October 7th has been returned, alive or dead. Many probably buried beneath rubble from IDF attacks, to be honest, since several were already confirmed killed by “friendly” fire.
Edit: to add, it is worth noting that Hamas is not the only group that participated in Oct 7 and took hostages. There are likely other hostages that they cannot account for because they were taken by other groups.