IDF can neither confirm nor deny Hamas claim female hostage was killed recently in northern Gaza

The IDF says it can neither confirm nor deny claims made by the military wing of the Hamas terror group this evening that a female hostage was recently killed in the northern Gaza Strip.

Hudhaifa Kahlout — known by the nom de guerre Abu Obeida — the spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, claimed in a statement issued on Telegram that “one of the enemy’s female prisoners was killed in an area that is under a Zionist aggression in the northern Gaza Strip, while the danger still threatens the life of another female prisoner who was with her.”

Alongside the statement, Hamas published a blurred picture of a body that it claimed belonged to the slain hostage.

The IDF says it’s “checking the information and at this stage, we are unable to verify or refute it.”

“IDF representatives are in contact with her family and are updating them with all the information available to us,” the military says, adding that “Hamas continues to use psychological terror and behave in a brutal manner.”

Israel has dismissed Hamas’s statements on the deaths of hostages as deplorable psychological warfare.

At the beginning of the war, Abu Obeida threatened to execute Israeli hostages and release footage of the killings.