Hamas Official to CNN: ‘No One Has Any Idea’ of Number of Israeli Hostages Still Alive

“No one has any idea” how many of the remaining 116 Israeli hostages are still alive, a senior Hamas official told CNN in an interview that aired Thursday.

CNN reported:

[A] senior Hamas official has told CNN that “no one has an idea” how many of them are alive, and that any deal to release them must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

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Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital Beirut, [Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama] Hamdan said the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan that was first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.

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Speaking to CNN, Hamdan said he didn’t know how many were still alive. “I don’t have any idea about that. No one has an idea about this,” he said, alleging – without providing any evidence – that the Israeli operation to free four of the hostages on Saturday resulted in the deaths of three others, including an American citizen.

Israeli commandos rescued four hostages on Saturday. Israel says that there are still 116 hostages, of whom 41 are known to be dead. It is not clear whether the remaining 75 are still alive, but Hamas’s claim that it does not know could be calculated to increase domestic pressure on the Israeli government to accede to the terror group’s demands.

Hamas has rejected the terms of a deal offered by the Biden administration, which the U.S. claims that Israel supports, though it has not done so publicly. Israel says it is committed to destroying Hamas as a military threat.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.