News- Middle East: A senior official with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to kill Israeli captives through starvation after failing to locate and kill them in airstrikes.

In a statement on Sunday, a Hamas Political Bureau member said Israeli captives are also being affected now by the starvation and thirst policy that Netanyahu and the “Nazi” administration have imposed on the people in Gaza, emphasizing that the Israeli regime shoulders full responsibility for their condition.

“When Netanyahu could not find the hostages and kill them through airstrikes, he is now trying to end the matter by starving them,” Izzat al-Rishq added.

He noted that the Palestinian resistance forces observe religious and humanitarian principles in dealing with Israeli captives, sharing their own food and water with them as they do with the wider Palestinian population.

The Hamas official emphasized that those Israeli captives who were released in the previous prisoner exchanges in good physical and mental health are now suffering from hunger, weakness and weight loss — mirroring the plight of besieged Gaza residents.

In January, a temporary ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas led to the release of several captives and Palestinian abductees held illegally in Israeli jails.

However, the Israeli regime refused to extend the deal as initially planned, choosing instead to intensify its military assaults on Gaza by shattering the 2-month deal.

Dozens of the captives have already been killed in Israel’s indiscriminate and relentless bombardment of the Palestinian territory, and now, the Israeli-imposed starvation is taking its toll on them, too.  

Al-Rishq said the Israeli prime minister’s policy of oppression against people in Gaza has also affected the captives and that he is trying to discipline them through cruel hunger.

Palestinian and Israeli rights groups say that 50 Israelis remain captive in Gaza, including 20 believed to be alive, while the Israeli regime is holding more than 10,800 Palestinian detainees, many of whom face torture, starvation and medical neglect.

Israel has launched a genocidal war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, after Hamas-led resistance groups waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Zionist entity in response to the regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed more than 60,800 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured some 149,500 others.

Thousands of victims are also feared trapped under rubble, inaccessible to emergency and civil defense teams due to Israeli attacks.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the besieged Strip.

Source: Press TV