GAZA, Palestine
Hamas, the group which
controls the Gaza Strip, has ruled out any more hostage releases until Israel
agrees to a "full cessation of aggression".Israeli soldiers on patrol in the Gaza Strip.
Israel says it has killed more
than 2,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza since a truce earlier this month when more
than 100 hostages were freed.
Around 120 people abducted
from Israel on 7 October are believed to be still in captivity in Gaza.
Efforts continue at the United
Nations to pass a resolution on the war.
The US has said it
still has serious concerns over the draft UN Security Council
resolution, with voting now postponed to Friday.
Fighting continues in Gaza,
with Israel bombarding the north and south of the territory and Hamas firing
rockets at Tel Aviv.
Among the Palestinians
reported killed were the director of the police station in the southern city of
Khan Younis and a daughter of the head of the Gaza health ministry.
The week-long truce this month
brought an increased flow of aid into Gaza, where the UN has warned that the
population is at risk of famine if the war between Israel and Hamas continues.
Negotiations on a new
truce have
been taking place in Cairo, Egypt, though initial talks on Wednesday
bore no agreement.
In a statement, Hamas said:
"There is a Palestinian national decision that there should be no talk
about prisoners or exchange deals except after a full cessation of
aggression."
It is unclear to which other
Palestinian factions the statement was referring. Islamic Jihad, a smaller
group in the Gaza Strip, is among those known to also be holding Israeli
hostages.
The Hamas statement puts the
Israeli government in a very difficult position.
It has said it thinks the best
way to get the release of hostages is military pressure on Hamas and by staging
rescue operations.
But so far that approach has
not really worked. Only one hostage - Ori Megidish - has actually been rescued.
The government is also under
huge pressure from the relatives of the hostages still being held, with some
telling it the strategy of force is not working.
Hamas is putting pressure on
Israel to stop the war altogether but without any guarantee that the group is
going to stop its armed actions.
So the Israeli government is extremely reluctant to stop fighting until it feels it has completely degraded Hamas capability and it has not done that yet.
This will be a huge
disappointment for the people of Gaza, who are desperate for this war to stop.
Early on Friday, the
territory's Hamas-run health ministry put the overall death toll there since 7
October at 20,057, including at least 8,000 children and 6,200 women.
When Hamas and their allies
broke through the heavily guarded perimeter with Israel on 7 October, they
killed 1,200 people.
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