JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Israel fears that only 40 of the 133 hostages being held by Hamas are still alive, according to a Daily Mail report Sunday.
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The figure is based on intelligence gathered by Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, which has been garnering information on the fate of the hostages since the Oct. 7th attack.
A source said: ‘[Intelligence] is much easier to access than before October 7 when we had limited access to Gaza and we didn’t have a lot of possibilities of sources.”
‘The situation is completely different because we are there.’
Among the hostages remaining in Hamas captivity are British citizens Nadav Popplewell,51, and Emily Damari, 27.
So far 112 hostages have been returned alive to Israel. Of those, 105 were released as part of an exchange last year. Before that, Hamas released four prisoners, while three more were rescued by the Israel Defense Forces.
The Israeli source added that: ‘Hamas is trying to keep everything very secret . . . they will never release all the hostages and corpses.’ Another security source said that: ‘Negotiating is a lost cause. We cannot possibly negotiate dead bodies for the release of hundreds or thousands more terrorists.’
Yehonatan Sabban, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, said: ‘The hostages in Gaza are running out of time.’
The Shin Bet responded to the Daily Mail report, stating Sunday that “the numbers mentioned in the article are incorrect. They are the opinion of the writer alone and are not based on information from the Shin Bet.”