CAIRO, September 1. /TASS/. Hamas has warned that the rest of Israeli hostages it is holding may share the same fate as pilot Ron Arad who went missing 36 years ago.
"[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is encouraging the emergence of dozens of new Ron Arads," it said on its Telegram channel.
Israeli pilot Ron Arad was taken hostage by militants of the Lebanese Shiite movement Amal in 1986 when his plane crashed during a combat mission near the city of Saida. Israel began talks on his release immediately after the accident but talks were cut short two years later. In 1988, the man was declared missing. His whereabouts are not known until today.
According to Hamas, the six hostages whose bodies were found by the Israeli military in tunnels near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip "were to be released during the first stage of the deal of their exchange for [Palestinian] prisoners," but the Israeli prime minister, in the radicals’ words, "opted in favor of the control over the Philadelphi Corridor (a narrow strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt - TASS) instead of releasing his hostages."
The Israeli military found the bodies of six Israeli hostages in an underground tunnel near the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on August 31. Hamas claims that these hostages died in Israel’s bombardments but Israel’s health ministry said that the forensic examination indicated that the six had been shot dead from a point-blank range two or three days before the examination, or on August 29 or 30.
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 240 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. 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.
According to Netanyahu’s office, as many as 101 hostages are still held by Hamas, with 39 of them being already dead. Radicals are keeping their bodies in the enclave.