Hamas release video showing two Israeli hostages alive in Gaza

Hamas’s armed wing released a video on Saturday showing two Israeli hostages alive in Gaza, speaking to the camera and describing how they had survived an alleged Israeli strike.

Israeli campaign group, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, issued a statement confirming that the family of hostage Maxim Herkin had identified him as one of the two captives featured in the video.

Israeli media named the second hostage as Israeli soldier Bar Kuperstein. Herkin’s family urged the media not to publish the video.

Palestinian militants had abducted the two men from the Nova music festival during their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades released the more than two-minute clip showing the captives seated close to each other.

Herkin appears with his right cheek and right hand bandaged, speaking to the camera under visible duress.

AFP was unable to verify the authenticity of the footage or when it was filmed.

Kuperstein is a resident of Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Then 21, he was abducted while trying to help revellers at the Nova festival.

Although he was not on duty that day, he was part of the festival staff.

Herkin, who also has Russian citizenship, was 35 at the time of the attack. He had emigrated to Israel from Ukraine with his mother.

Before being taken from the Nova festival, Herkin, father of a young girl, wrote to his mother: “All is well. I’m coming home”.

The latest video was released a day after Israeli forces launched a ground offensive in the Shujaiya area of Gaza City “in order to expand the security zone” inside the Palestinian territory.

Hamas’s armed wing warned on Friday that the offensive was putting hostages’ lives at risk.

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that at least 29 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Saturday in several parts of the territory.

Fifty-eight hostages remain in captivity in Gaza, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.

During a six-week ceasefire that ended with Israel’s resumption of air strikes on Gaza on March 18, militants handed over 33 hostages, eight of them dead.

Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s military response has killed at least 50,669 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

AFP