Diplomatic bids to free around 200 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza gathered pace Tuesday, with Turkey saying it was in talks with the Islamist group to secure their release.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke from Beirut as calls mounted from the captives’ families for world leaders to intervene after Hamas on Monday released the first video of a hostage purportedly speaking from captivity.
“So far, we have received requests from various countries for the release of their citizens. As a result, we started to discuss these issues, especially with the political wing of Hamas,” Fidan told a news conference in Beirut alongside his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Habib, AFP reports.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday also said intense talks were underway to secure the hostages’ release.
“I want to be very cautious here so as not to endanger the intense talks we are currently conducting,” Macron told reporters in the Albanian capital Tirana. “But they are progressing and we are following these talks hour by hour,” he added.
France was “working with its partners to free French hostages held by Hamas,” the Elysee presidential palace later quoted Macron as saying.
Macron spoke after the mother of French-Israeli hostage Mia Shem, urged world leaders to secure her daughter’s release after the Islamists aired a video apparently showing the young woman in captivity.
AFP gathered that Hamas aired the video on its official Telegram channel, showing a young woman speaking Hebrew.
In the video, the first released by Hamas of a hostage purportedly speaking from captivity, the woman says she is being held in Gaza, is being well treated and appeals for her release.
“I ask world leaders that my daughter be returned to us in the state that she is today, as well as the other hostages,” Keren Shem told a press conference in Tel Aviv.
“I beg the world to return my baby to me,” Shem added.
Scores of people were taken hostage during Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, when Hamas gunmen shot, stabbed or burned to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.
The Israeli army has confirmed at least 199 hostages were taken to Gaza. Hamas had claimed that they hold around 250 captives.
“Our efforts continue, especially for the release of foreigners, civilians and children. We will continue our efforts to ensure lasting peace,” Fidan said Tuesday, a day after he held a phone conversation with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh about the hostages.
Israeli forces have carried out localised raids across the border during which they have located the bodies of some of those abducted, with the latest such operation taking place on Tuesday, an army spokesman said.
Six killed in Gaza school – UN
At least six people were killed when a United Nations-run Gaza school they were sheltering in was hit during Israeli air strikes Tuesday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said.
“At least, six people were killed this afternoon when a UNRWA school was hit in Al-Maghazi refugee camp” in central Gaza, the UN agency said.
“The school was hit during Israeli forces air strikes and bombardment on the Gaza Strip,” it said.
Dozens of people, including UNRWA staff, were wounded and the school suffered severe structural damage, it said, adding the number of casualties was expected to rise.
“At least 4,000 people have taken refuge in this UNRWA school turned shelter. They had and still have nowhere else to go,” the agency said.
Biden’s visit
Israeli air strikes on a hospital compound in the Gaza Strip killed at least 200 people, officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said on Tuesday, on the eve of United States President Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East.
President Joe Biden’s visit, potentially the riskiest of his presidency, is expected to see him reaffirm the United States backing for Israel and try to stop the escalating war against Hamas from spiraling into wider conflict.
Biden’s trip will come 12 days after the Palestinian militants of Hamas burst through Israel’s heavily fortified Gaza border, shooting, mutilating and burning more than 1,400 people.
