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The Hamas Group, which launched an audacious terror attack on Israel on October 7, has offered to release all hostages on a condition.
A senior Hamas official told NBC News that the armed group was willing to release all civilian hostages immediately if Israel stops its airstrikes on Gaza.
The report stated that the Hamas official was ready to free all hostages within an hour if the Israeli forces aborted their military offensives in the Gaza Strip.
The armed group’s condition to release civilian hostages came shortly after an air strike killed hundreds of people at a Gaza City hospital on Tuesday in the Hamas-run enclave. Israel’s military denied responsibility for an attack on a Gaza hospital on Tuesday, saying military intelligence suggested the hospital was hit by a failed rocket launch by the enclave’s Palestinian Islamic Jihad military group.
“Following an analysis by the IDF’s operational systems, a barrage of rockets was launched toward Israel, which passed in the vicinity of the hospital, when it was hit,” Israel Defense Forces shared on X.
“According to intelligence information from a number of sources we have, the Islamic Jihad terrorist organisation is responsible for the failed rocket launch that hit the hospital,” IDF added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “barbaric terrorists” in Gaza had attacked the hospital, not Israel’s military.
In the first hours after the blast, a Gaza civil defence chief said 300 people were killed, while health ministry sources put the figure at 500, as per a Reuters report.
Separately, US President Joe Biden on Tuesday left the White House for a quick trip to Israel to show solidarity with the people of the country in the aftermath of the terrorist attack by Hamas.
“I am outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion at the Al Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, and the terrible loss of life that resulted. Immediately upon hearing this news, I spoke with King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and have directed my national security team to continue gathering information about what exactly happened,” Biden said in a statement minutes before he boarded Air Force One for Israel.
Biden has been backing Israeli calls for eliminating Hamas following the attacks carried out by it on Israel on October 7 in which more than 1,300 people were killed and between 200 and 250 Israelis are said to have been taken to Gaza as hostages.
(With agencies inputs)
