Top Hamas official: Nobody has any clue how many hostages still alive

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan says nobody knows how many of the 116 remaining hostages kidnapped on October 7 are still alive.

“I don’t have any idea about that,” the Beirut-based terror official tells CNN. “No one has an idea about this.”

He also blames Israel for the mental state of four hostages recently rescued, after a doctor said they were subject to constant physical and emotional abuse while in captivity.

“I believe if they have mental problem, this is because of what Israel have done in Gaza,” he says, adding the wild claim that the abductees looked better coming out of Gaza than when they were kidnapped.

Rescued hostage Almog Meir Jan raises his hands in celebration as he is escorted from an IDF helicopter on arrival at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, June 8, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Hamdan defends the group’s rejection of truce terms, saying Israel needs to agree to a full ceasefire before any negotiations on freeing hostages.

Hamas needs “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege … and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange,” he is quoted saying.

He also rejects a recent Wall Street Journal report that claimed Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar welcomed Gazan civilian deaths as a “necessary sacrifice.”

“It was fake messages done by someone who is not Palestinian and (it) was sent (to the) Wall Street Journal as part of the pressure against Hamas and provoking the people against the leader,” CNN quotes him saying. The network adds that no evidence was given.