The fate of the hostages being held by Hamas is getting "worse and worse," says Maj. Doron Spielman, international spokesman for Israel Defense Forces.
"We only have partial information on [the situation], we are looking right now for 138 hostages.
"There was just another hostage added, actually, because we have to understand the massacre was so enormous on Oct. 7th that we've been sifting through ash to try to identify DNA and we actually just realized that a person that we thought had been killed in fact is likely being held hostage," Spielman told Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren" on Thursday.
"That is the level of unknown," he added.
"The disaster was so immense, and Hamas kept these people underground for so long that there's a lot of a lot of fog around this issue. We are moving forward on the ground. The most important thing for us is to get friction on the ground with these terrorists, with the infrastructure, to be able to interrogate.
"We have rounded up hundreds of Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, interrogated them, we have intelligence of tunnels, intelligence of pathways, and as we paint a clear picture, it's really from the ground that we're able to move forward. ... but the fate of those hostages gets worse and worse as time goes on and that's why we've been calling on the Red Cross."
Of some 240 people kidnapped, 108 were freed by Hamas in return for the release by Israel of scores of Palestinian detainees as well as boosted humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza.
Since the truce, Israeli authorities have declared seven civilians and an army colonel as dead in captivity. Israel says 137 hostages remain in Gaza, their condition not always known.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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