Hamas lists 34 hostages it may free under ceasefire

A senior Hamas official has shared with the BBC a list of 34 hostages that the Palestinian group says it is willing to release in the first stage of a potential ceasefire agreement with Israel.

It is unclear how many of those named remain alive.

Among them are 10 women and 11 older male hostages aged between 50 and 85, as well as young children who Hamas previously said had been killed in an Israeli air strike.

A number of hostages who Hamas says are sick are also included on the list.

Reports from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry say Israeli air strikes killed more than 100 people there at the weekend.

The Israeli prime minister’s office denied reports that Hamas had provided Israel with a list of hostages.

“The list of abductees published in the media was not passed on to Israel by Hamas, but was originally passed from Israel to intermediaries as early as July 2024,” it said.

“To date, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment from Hamas regarding the status of the abductees on the list.”

Hamas’s decision to release the names of hostages will be seen by some as an attempt to increase public pressure on the Israeli government.

Ceasefire negotiations resumed in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend, but the talks do not appear to have made significant progress yet.

A Hamas official told Reuters news agency any agreement to return Israeli hostages would depend on a deal for Israel to withdraw from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire or end to the war.

“However, until now, the occupation continues to be obstinate over an agreement over the issues of the ceasefire and withdrawal, and has made no step forward,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Earlier, Hamas posted a video of 19-year-old Israeli captive Liri Albag urging her government to make a deal.

She was captured along with six other female conscript soldiers at the Nahal Oz army base on the Gaza border during Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.

On that day Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.

Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas had killed at least 45,805 people in Gaza as of Saturday, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The same source says Israeli air strikes killed 88 people in Gaza on Saturday itself while on Sunday, Reuters news agency quoted health sources as saying a further 17 had died in four separate Israeli attacks on the territory.

The Israeli military said on Sunday that its air force had attacked more than 100 “terrorist” sites across the Gaza Strip over the weekend, killing dozens of Hamas militants.