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The Al-Qassam Brigades published a video clip that included a message to the families of the Israeli detainees, in which it said: “Wait for us, tomorrow we will tell you their fate. Your government is lying.” The clip also included a message from a number of detainees to the Israeli government demanding an end to the war.
Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, sent a message on Sunday evening to the families of Israeli prisoners held by the movement, saying: “Wait for us, tomorrow we will tell you their fate. Your government is lying.”
Al-Qassam published a video clip of a number of prisoners sending letters to the Israeli government demanding that the war be stopped and that they be returned to their families.
Al-Qassam wrote at the end of the attached video that she posted on her account on the Telegram platform: “Wait for us, tomorrow we will tell you their fate. Your government is lying.”
On Sunday evening, Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, announced that the fate of many Israeli prisoners in Gaza “has become unknown in recent weeks,” suggesting that some of them were likely killed recently.
This came in a video speech on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, and it is Abu Ubaida’s first audio and video speech since last November 23.
Abu Ubaida said, "The fate of many of the prisoners and detainees of the (Israeli) enemy has become unknown during recent weeks, but the rest have all entered the tunnel of the unknown due to the Zionist aggression."
He added: "Most likely, many of them will have been killed recently, while the rest are still in imminent and dangerous danger every hour," stressing that "the enemy's leadership and army bear all responsibility for this file."
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli side on what was issued by the Al-Qassam Brigades.
On October 7, Hamas carried out an attack on the settlements surrounding Gaza, in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed, about 5,431 were injured, and at least 239 were captured.
Israel estimates that there are about “137 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip,” according to identical media reports and statements by Israeli officials.
Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, are sponsoring efforts to reach a second temporary truce in Gaza, as the first truce was reached last November and resulted in the release of 105 detainees held by Hamas, including 81 Israelis, 23 Thai citizens, and one Filipino. And 240 Palestinian prisoners.
For 100 days, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, which as of Sunday left 23,968 martyrs, 60,582 wounded, most of them children and women, massive destruction of infrastructure and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, according to the Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that the resistance tunnels in the Gaza Strip surprised the military leaders in Israel in terms of their interconnectedness, spread and quality. The army was surprised that the size of this network exceeded estimates hundreds of times, and it became the biggest challenge in the war on the Strip.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that the network of tunnels built by the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip exceeded Israeli estimates before the war hundreds of times.
The newspaper said that the Israeli army was surprised that the size of the tunnel network in the Gaza Strip “exceeds the estimates of military commanders by about 600 percent,” while before the war estimates indicated that there were about 100 to 200 kilometers of tunnels.
In the middle of last month, the occupation army announced the discovery of a 4-kilometre-long tunnel opposite the Gaza envelope settlements and promoted it as a victory against the Hamas movement, but the Al-Qassam Brigades mocked the occupation army and said that the discovered tunnel was built for use in the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle on the 7th of last October. .
The tunnels posed the greatest challenge to the occupation army in Gaza, as it declared more than once its intention to disable them and flood them with water, as the resistance operations launched from them constituted a strong deterrent against its military forces penetrating into the Strip.
The newspaper had pointed out, in a previous report, that since the end of 2020, the resistance had not had any attack tunnel towards the settlements in the Gaza envelope, but it discovered that these estimates were wrong during the ground operation in Gaza.
Israeli analysts say, "Israel uncovers the tunnels and demolishes them, but the pace of demolition does not yet keep pace with the planned timetable for the military operation."
A vast network of logistical, defensive and offensive tunnels extends under the Gaza Strip, and there is no accurate information about their nature, size, number and depth.
These tunnels played an important role in the battles waged by the Palestinian factions against the Israeli occupation army, especially what are known as “ambush tunnels,” which are a new, advanced generation of attack tunnels that are fast and easy to move.
With the tightening of the siege on the Gaza Strip for years, the Palestinians in Gaza dug hundreds of tunnels, some inside the Gaza Strip, and others under the Philadelphia axis all the way to Egypt, forming a main route for importing their basic needs, before this phenomenon ended in 2014 and was followed a few years later by the entry of goods from Egypt into Gaza. Through the Rafah crossing officially.
As of Monday, the war on Gaza left 24,100 martyrs, in addition to 60,832 injured, and also caused the displacement of more than 85 percent of the Gaza Strip’s population (equivalent to 1.9 million people), according to the Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.