LONDON, November 7. /TASS/. A senior Hamas official said on Tuesday that Hamas members have found two females from Russia being held hostage in the Gaza Strip but cannot release them due to the ongoing hostilities.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told the BBC that Hamas members had "looked for and found two female hostages" but cannot release them amid the fighting. According to Marzouk, hostages can only be released when "the Israelis stop the fighting so we can hand them over to the Red Cross." He also said that Hamas doesn’t have a single list of hostages because these people are held by "different groups."

According to the BBC, the possible release of Russian hostages was discussed during the recent visit to Moscow by a Hamas delegation. Marzouk was among the delegation members.

In his interview with the BBC, he denied that Hamas targeted civilians, women and children during the October 7 attack.

Chief of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin said earlier on Tuesday that his service was making efforts to obtain information about Russians held by Hamas. A day earlier, Palestinian Ambassador to Russia Abdel Hafiz Nofal said that seven or eight Russians are being held hostage in the Gaza Strip.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.