Qatari officials said to tell hostage families Sinwar no longer calling them, but is alive

Qatari officials mediating hostage deal talks with Hamas told the families of captives last week that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was no longer calling them, Channel 12 reports.

The Qataris said Sinwar was now only communicating with a pen and paper — a decision made after a series of assassinations that took out Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s leadership — which poses a challenge to their mediation efforts, the report says.

The officials also told the families that it is likely Sinwar has surrounded himself with hostages, and dispelled speculation that he may have been killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to the report.

“Israel has adopted a policy of assassinations that is incompatible with the deal. In the past, there was [former Hamas leader Ismail] Haniyeh and he was eliminated. Now there is Khaled Mashaal and he is much more difficult than Haniyeh,” the officials told the hostage families, Channel 12 reports.

The location of the meeting was not immediately clear.

Haniyeh was killed in Tehran in July, in an assassination blamed on Israel, though Jerusalem has not confirmed or denied its involvement.