A senior Hamas official has shared with the BBC a list of 34 hostages that the Palestinian group says it is willing to release in the first stage of a potential ceasefire agreement with Israel.
It is unclear how many of those named remain alive.
Among them are 10 women and 11 older male hostages aged between 50 and 85, as well as young children who Hamas previously said had been killed in an Israeli air strike.
A number of hostages who Hamas says are sick are also included on the list.
Reports from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry say Israeli air strikes killed more than 100 people there at the weekend.
The Israeli prime minister’s office denied reports that Hamas had provided Israel with a list of hostages.
“The list of abductees published in the media was not passed on to Israel by Hamas, but was originally passed from Israel to intermediaries as early as July 2024,” it said.
“To date, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment from Hamas regarding the status of the abductees on the list.”
Hamas’s decision to release the names of hostages will be seen by some as an attempt to increase public pressure on the Israeli government.
Ceasefire negotiations resumed in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend, but the talks do not appear to have made significant progress yet.
A Hamas official told Reuters news agency any agreement to return Israeli hostages would depend on a deal for Israel to withdraw from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire or end to the war.
“However, until now, the occupation continues to be obstinate over an agreement over the issues of the ceasefire and withdrawal, and has made no step forward,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Israel and Hamas have consistently accused each other of obstructing progress towards a ceasefire deal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Seoul on Monday that he was “confident that [a deal] will get its completion at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later”, though he conceded it might happen after Joe Biden leaves office on 20 January.
On Sunday, Hamas posted a video of 19-year-old Israeli captive Liri Albag in which she was seen urging her government to make a deal.
Albag was captured along with six other female soldiers at the Nahal Oz army base on the Gaza border during Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.
About 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken hostage in the unprecedented attack, which triggered a massive Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
At least 45,805 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s health ministry says.
The ministry says Israeli air strikes killed 88 people in Gaza on Saturday, while on Sunday Reuters quoted health sources as saying a further 17 had been killed in four separate Israeli attacks on the territory.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that its air force had attacked more than 100 “terrorist” sites across the Gaza Strip over the weekend, killing dozens of Hamas fighters.
The names on the list of hostages provided by Hamas:
Romi Gonen (24); Emily Damari (28); Arbel Yehoud (29); Doron Steinbrecher (31); Ariel Bibas (5); Kfir Bibas (1); Shiri Silberman Bibas (33); Liri Albag (19); Karina Ariev (20); Agam Berger (20); Daniel Gilboa (20); Naama Levy (20); Ohad Ben-Ami (55); Gad Moshe Moses (80); Keith Shmuel Siegel (65); Offer Kaldaron (53); Eliyahu Sharabi (52); Itzhak Elgaret (69); Shlomo Mansur (86); Ohad Yahalomi (50); Yousef Yousef Alziadna (54); Oded Lifshitz (84); Tsachi Idan (50); Hisham al-Sayed (36); Yarden Bibas (35); Sagi Dekel Chen (36); Iair Horn (46); Omer Wenkert (23); Alexandre Troufanov (28); Eliya Cohen (27); Or Levy (34); Avera Mengistu (38); Tal Shoham (39); Omer Shem Tov (21).
Ethiopian Israeli Avera Mengistu, and Bedouin Arab Israeli Hisham al-Sayed were taken captive in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
By BBC News
Email your news TIPS to Editor@kahawatungu.com or WhatsApp +254707482874