(Reuters) – The Hamas armed branch said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the group of combatants holding hostage in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli -American national Edan Alexander, engaged in the Israeli army, following an attack by TSAhal.
Speaking via Telegram messaging, the spokesperson for the armed branch of the Palestinian movement, Abu Oubaïda, did not specify the alleged place of the incident.
Subsequently, a video was broadcast at the families of the hostages that their “children will return to black coffins, their bodies torn by bursts of shells from your army”.
Hamas has reproached in the past in Israel for being responsible, with its military operations, for the death of several hostages detained in the Gaza Strip since the attack of October 7, 2023. The Palestinian group also admitted that a hostage was killed by one of its guards who acted against the instructions which had been given to it.
No comments were immediately made by the Israeli army.
US President Donald Trump’s special emissary for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, said in March that obtaining the release of Edan Alexander, 21, was an “absolute priority” for the White House, the man being considered the last American national held by Hamas in Gaza.
A group representing families of certain hostages in Gaza said earlier Tuesday that Edan Alexander was part of a dozen hostages that could be released by Hamas if a new ceasefire was concluded between the Palestinian group and Israel. The Tikva forum said it quoted a conversation the day before between the mother of a hostage and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose services did not comment on this declaration.
The release of Edan Alexander was at the heart of negotiations opened directly last month by Washington with Hamas, who said mid-March to accept the American demand.
Israel, who denounced a “manipulation”, led a few days later bombings in the unprecedented Gaza Strip since the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, left pending since January, and has resumed its land assaults in the Palestinian enclave.
(Menna Alaa El-Din and Jaidaa Taha in Cairo; Jean Terzian, edited by Kate Entringer)
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