ShareBEIRUT: Diplomatic bids to free around 200 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza gathered pace Tuesday, with Turkey saying it was in talks with the group to secure their release. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke from Beirut as calls mounted from the captives’ families for world leaders to intervene, after Hamas on Monday released the first video of a hostage purportedly speaking from captivity.
“So far, we have received requests from various countries for the release of their citizens. As a result, we started to discuss these issues, especially with the political wing of Hamas,” Fidan told a news conference in Beirut alongside his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib. Scores of people were taken hostage during Hamas’s attack on Zionists on October 7.
The Zionist army has confirmed at least 199 hostages were taken to Gaza. Hamas had claimed that they hold around 250 captives. “Our efforts continue, especially for the release of foreigners, civilians and children. We will continue our efforts to ensure lasting peace,” Fidan said Tuesday, a day after he held a phone conversation with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh about the hostages. Zionist forces have carried out localized raids across the border during which they have located the bodies of some of those abducted, with the latest such operation taking place on Tuesday, an army spokesman said.
BEIRUT: Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib (right) speaks to his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan during a joint press conference following their meeting on Oct 17, 2023.‘Beg the world’
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday also said that intense talks were underway to secure the hostages’ release. “I want to be very cautious here ... so as not to endanger the intense talks we are currently conducting,” Macron told reporters in the Albanian capital Tirana. “But they are progressing and we are following these talks hour by hour.” France was “working with its partners to free French hostages held by Hamas”, the Elysee presidential palace later quoted Macron as saying.
Macron spoke after the mother of French-Zionist hostage Mia Shem, urged world leaders to secure her daughter’s release after the Islamists aired a video apparently showing the young woman in captivity. Hamas aired the video on its official Telegram channel, showing a young woman speaking Hebrew. In the video, the first released by Hamas of a hostage purportedly speaking from captivity, the woman says she is being held in Gaza, is being well treated and appeals for her release. “I ask world leaders that my daughter be returned to us in the state that she is today, as well as the other hostages,” Keren Shem told a press conference in Tel Aviv. “I beg the world to return my baby to me,” Shem added.
TEL AVIV: Keren Shem, the mother of French-Zionist woman Mia Shem, speaks to the press on Oct 17, 2023.‘Colossal’ failure
Shem said her daughter was at a rave party in the desert near the border when she was abducted to Gaza during the October 7 deadly attack. “Now she is in Gaza. She is not the only one. There are many adults, children, babies and Holocaust survivors,” she said of other Zionists held by the militants. “It is a crime against humanity. All together we need to stop this terror,” she added.
The Zionist government has come under criticism for its response to the hostage situation. Since the attack, dozens of Zionists have tirelessly held sit-ins in front of the defense ministry in Tel Aviv to demand the release of the hostages and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “All these people (the hostages) must come home.
This government has failed in a colossal way,” said Mona Hanoch, 58. Nearby, sitting on a plastic chair, Cindy Cohen, 65, held up a sign reading: “Prisoner exchange agreement now.” “We must release all the hostages in exchange for all the (Palestinian) prisoners held by (the Zionist occupation),” she added. — AFP
