BEIRUT, November 22. /TASS/. A spokesman for the Al-Quds Brigades (Saraya al-Quds), the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) radical movement, reported late on Tuesday that an Israeli hostage whom the group was earlier ready to release for humanitarian reasons, has died.

"We report the death of Hannah Katzir, an Israeli resident whom we earlier offered to release for humanitarian reasons. The [Israeli] enemy’s procrastination has led to her death," spokesman Abu Hamza said in a statement on the Al-Quds Brigades Telegram channel on Tuesday.

The statement says that "amid [Israel’s] barbaric bombings of every inch of the Gaza territory," the group is "renouncing all responsibility towards [Israeli] hostages."

According to the IDF, there are at least 242 military and civilian persons currently being held captive in the Gaza Strip. They are being held not only by Hamas, but by other radical groups, including Islamic Jihad. Negotiations on the release of hostages and captives are underway with mediation from Qatar, with additional mediation efforts exerted by Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon.

In a video address, posted on Telegram on November 9, Abu Hamza said that the Al-Quds Brigades were offering to release a woman and a boy child, who were taken hostage in early October. He said the group was ready to release them "for humanitarian reasons" because of the group’s inability to provide them with necessary medical assistance and medicines.

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.