Talks on a ceasefire in the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas will not be possible until all hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist movement are released, US President Joe Biden said on Monday.

“The hostages have to be released, then we can talk,” the US president said when asked if he would be in favor of a “hostage-in-lieu-of-ceasefire” deal.

Mr Biden then apologized for having to leave a White House event to promote his economic agenda ahead of the 2021 presidential election, saying he needed to go to the crisis room for “another problem we have to deal with”.

He made these statements after Hamas announced that it had released two hostages it took when it launched its attack on Israel.

The Israeli authorities talk about 220 hostages, Israelis, foreigners, or people with dual citizenship. They were abducted and taken to Gaza by members of the Palestinian Islamist movement during their unprecedented incursion into Israeli territory on October 7, triggering the war in which Israel has since pounded the Gaza Strip to “wipe out” Hamas.

Over 1,400 people were massacred in Israeli territory, the majority of them civilians. According to the Israeli military, about 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed in the counterattack that allowed its forces to regain control of the areas that were attacked.

In the Gaza Strip, 5,087 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 2,055 children, were killed in the relentless shelling in retaliation by the Israeli army, according to the Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza. Entire neighborhoods were leveled.

During his phone conversation with Pope Francis on Sunday, US President Joe Biden said they discussed the Israel/Hamas war and the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

“The pope and I are on the same wavelength, he was very interested in what we are doing,” the American president assured yesterday.

Adding that he explained to the head of the Roman Catholic church “what the plan is” for US support for Israel, he said the pontiff expressed “in general” his “support”.