Palestinian resistance group Hamas said Thursday that a fighter in Gaza who shot dead an Israeli hostage acted “in revenge” after hearing his children had died in an Israeli attack.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced on Monday that an Israeli hostage was killed and two others wounded in separate shooting “incidents”.
The group said in a statement on Thursday that its investigation into the Israeli man’s death in captivity had found that “a conscript assigned to guard (the hostage) acted against orders in revenge, after receiving news of the martyrdom of his two children in one of the enemy’s massacres”.
Out of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian fighters during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war, 111 are still held in the Gaza Strip including 39 the Israeli military says are dead.
The photograph released by the Hamas armed wing along with its latest statement showed a dead man covered in a blood-stained white shroud, without identifying him.
The statement described his death as an “unfortunate incident”, blaming the “brutality” of the Israeli military campaign for it.
“Your brutality has become an imminent danger to your prisoners,” Hamas said.
“The relevant family was notified,” the statement added without identifying the slain hostage.
It did not directly address the Hamas statement, but only the photograph.
The military had said following Hamas’s Monday announcement that Israel does “not have any intelligence information that allows us to refute or confirm Hamas’ claims” that one of its militants had shot dead a hostage.
Hamas‘s latest statement made no mention of the second incident reported on Monday, in which the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades had said two other hostages, both women, were shot and wounded.
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel’s retaliatory militant campaign has killed at least 40,005 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
International mediators have invited the warring sides for negotiations Thursday in Qatar, seeking a truce in Gaza and a hostage release deal.
