The Japan Times - Hamas armed wing says fate of US-Israeli captive unknown

The body of a guard assigned to the American-Israeli, Edan Alexander, had been recovered from the site of a recent Israeli strike, Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement.

"But the fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown," the militants said.

Hamas on Thursday signalled its rejection of the plan, which would have involved Alexander.

A senior Hamas official had on Monday said Israel proposed a 45-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of 10 living hostages, the first of whom would have been Alexander.

He is among the dozens of living and dead captives still held in Gaza, 18 months after Hamas's war with Israel began, and weeks into a renewed Israeli offensive that rescuers in Gaza said killed 54 people on Saturday.

Alexander had also featured in a proposal one month earlier from the United States Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

On Tuesday, Hamas announced it had "lost contact" with the militant unit holding Alexander following an Israeli air strike on their location in the Gaza Strip.

"We are trying to protect all the prisoners (hostages) and preserve their lives despite the brutality of the aggression... but their lives are in danger due to the criminal bombing operations carried out by the enemy army," Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, said in a statement.

The Brigades on April 12 released a video showing Alexander alive, in which he criticised the Israeli government for failing to secure his release.

Alexander was serving as a soldier in an elite infantry unit on the Gaza border when Palestinian militants abducted him during their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Of the 251 hostages taken during the attack, 58 remain in captivity in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that he believed "we can bring our hostages home without surrendering to Hamas's dictates", adding the military campaign in Gaza was "at a critical stage".

- Soldier killed -

Israel resumed its intense air strikes and ground offensive across Gaza on March 18 amid disagreement over the next phase in a ceasefire that lasted two months.

Rejecting a new truce proposal, Hamas's chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya on Thursday said the Islamist group sought a comprehensive deal including "halting the war" and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

An Israeli pullout and a "permanent end to the war" would also have occurred -- as outlined by then-US president Joe Biden -- under a second phase of the ceasefire that had begun on January 19 but later collapsed.

Since Israeli forces resumed their offensive, at least 1,783 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

On Saturday, Israel announced its first military fatality in the territory since the ceasefire's collapse.

Also on Saturday, the Al-Qassam Brigades released a video showing an Israeli hostage alive in Gaza.

Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum identified the hostage as Elkana Bohbot, who was abducted from a music festival during the October 7 attack.

In the footage, Bohbot is seen speaking in Hebrew into a landline telephone, urging a friend to take his wife to the White House to meet US President Donald Trump in an effort to secure his release.

It is the third such video of Bohbot, a Colombian-Israeli, since March 24.

The hostage forum released a statement from his family who were "shocked and devastated" after the video release.

"We are extremely concerned about Elkana's physical and mental condition -- everyone can see it," the family said.

Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday night in a regular ritual calling for a deal for the hostages' release, a stance reiterated by the forum, which accused Netanyahu of having "no plan" for securing the captives' freedom.

"There is one clear, feasible, and urgent solution that can be achieved now: reach a deal that will bring everyone home -- even if it means stopping the fighting," the hostage forum said in a statement.

Hamas's October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,281 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, while Israel's military offensive since then has killed at least 51,157 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from both sides.

H.Hayashi--JT