Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to “settle scores” with Hamas after the army recovered the bodies of six hostages from a Gaza tunnel.
Netanyahu said in a statement, “Those who killed the hostages do not want a ceasefire agreement in Gaza”, and told Hamas leaders that “we will pursue you, we will catch you and we will settle accounts”.
Netanyahu said Israel was “fighting on all fronts against a ruthless enemy who wants to murder us all”, referring to a shooting attack near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on Sunday that left three police officers dead.
Hamas has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but in a statement called it a “heroic operation of the resistance”.
According to Netanyahu, “the fact that Hamas continues to commit the atrocities it committed on October 7 obliges us to do everything possible to ensure that it cannot do so again”, referring to the Palestinian group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel that sparked the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
A senior Hamas official said several of the six hostages found dead had been “approved” for release in the event of a ceasefire agreement, which has yet to be finalised despite months of mediation efforts.
The official told AFP that “the names of some of the hostages found by the (Israeli) occupiers… were part of a list of hostages to be released, which was approved by Hamas” in a proposed exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and two others whose bodies were recovered in Gaza – Carmel Gat and Eden Yerushalmi – have been approved for release by Hamas in the event of a ceasefire agreement, Israeli media reported.
A Hamas official said the six hostages were “killed by occupier fire and bombing”, although the Israeli military denied the allegation.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said in an online briefing with journalists that “according to our initial assessment, he was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists”.
Shoshani said, “We know he was assassinated by Hamas terrorists. We know – I can tell you – that there was no firing in the tunnel in real time.”
He said Hamas’ claim that the hostages were killed by the Israeli military amounted to “psychological warfare.”
According to Shoshani, the bodies were found in a tunnel in the southern city of Rafah, about a kilometre (0.6 mile) from the spot where troops rescued alive another hostage, prisoner Farhan al-Qadi, on Tuesday.
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