In clip found in tunnel, Hamas captors watch TV, discuss hostage they were holding
In a newly released recording recovered in the Gaza tunnel where six hostages were murdered in August, Hamas terror group operatives can be heard watching an Al Jazeera broadcast about the families of captives. They can be heard noting a picture of Almog Sarusi, who was held in the tunnel in which the recording was found.
The short video, published by the Kan public broadcaster on Wednesday with the permission of the Sarusi family, was discovered on a flash drive recovered from the tunnel, located beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
In late August, six Israeli hostages who were kidnapped from the Supernova music festival on October 7, 2023 and held captive in the tunnel system for almost a year were executed by their captors, as Israeli soldiers closed in on their location.
The video shows an Al Jazeera broadcast, paused on footage of a protest in support of a hostage deal, in which one demonstrator is holding a sign with a photo of Sarusi.
Two men, off-camera, can be heard talking about the broadcast in Arabic.
Their discussion was translated into Hebrew via subtitles in the video released to the public, which Kan aired Wednesday night. It is not always entirely clear in the video who is speaking, but the exchange appears to be between two men.
“Yes, there he is — Almog Sarusi,” one man says in the clip, pausing the TV report.
“Yes, he has long hair,” says the other.
“They set up a sort of encampment,” one of the voices adds, referring to the families of the hostages who have been demonstrating for a deal securing the release of their loved ones.
“The ones who are lifting up the photos of [the hostages] — those are their families,” the other says.
The video was released some two months after the IDF discovered the bodies of the six hostages —Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Sarusi, 27 — on September 1, with forensic examinations determining they’d been killed less than 72 hours before their bodies were recovered.
The hostages were likely human shields for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and survived for months on energy bars until they were finally executed, a TV report said last month.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Source » timesofisrael.com
