The Associated Press reported on the 3rd (local time) that four more Israeli hostages, held captive by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, have been confirmed dead. Hamas had captured 250 Israelis during a surprise attack on October 7 last year, and about half of them were released during the weeklong ceasefire period in November of the same year. It is estimated that about 85 of the remaining 130 hostages in the Gaza Strip are still alive.
Daniel Hagari, Chief Spokesperson for the Israeli Military, announced that four Israeli hostages: Amiram Cooper, Yoram Metzger, Haim Peri, and Nadav Popplewell, were killed in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Without providing the details, Hagari stated they are “checking all of the options” and that “there are a lot of questions.”
According to the AP, the exact cause of their deaths has not been confirmed, but Hamas claimed last month that Popplewell died after getting injured in an Israeli airstrike.
Aside from Popplewell, Cooper, Metzger, and Perri were all elderlies in their 80s who appeared in a video last December released by Hamas’ military organization, Al-Qassam Brigades. In the video, Peri expressed frustration in Hebrew that he is enduring the harsh conditions along with the elderly suffering from illness, saying, “We don’t understand why we have been abandoned here.”
Peri appealed, “We must be released from here at any cost. We don’t want to become direct victims of an Israeli airstrike.”
The three men repeatedly pleaded, “Don’t leave us to grow old here.”
At the time, spokesperson Hagari fiercely criticized Hamas, stating the video “reveals the cruelty of Hamas towards the elderly who need medical treatment and innocent civilians.”