ICRC chief in Israel meets with families of hostages, FM Eli Cohen
Renee Ghert-Zand is the health reporter and a feature writer for The Times of Israel.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, Health Minister Uriel Busso, Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov and several representatives from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum meet with International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.
Spoljaric, on her first visit to Israel since October 7, is also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
She is also expected to meet this evening at the Carlton Hotel in Tel Aviv with a small delegation of relatives of the remaining 135 hostages — 20 of whom are dead, according to authorities — in Gaza.
The Families Forum has called for the public to gather at 8 p.m. with family members of the hostages and medical teams across from the Carlton Hotel to demand that the ICRC visit the hostages to assess their condition and provide them with all necessary medical care.
Both the Israeli government and the medical team of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum have provided the ICRC with a document detailing the hostages’ known medical conditions and diseases and the medications they require. Some of the hostages suffer from serious medical conditions that require daily medications and regular monitoring by doctors. Others were seriously wounded by Hamas terrorists in Israel or as they were dragged to Gaza.
The ICRC has repeatedly claimed that it has not been able to access the hostages because Hamas has not made this possible. The organization has come under harsh criticism in Israel.