Hamas says Israel endangering life of captive held in besieged area of Gaza

The armed wing of Hamas issued a warning to Israel on Thursday amid a siege of a location where an Israeli captive is being held in Gaza.

In a statement, the Al-Qassam Brigades' masked spokesman Abu Obeida said that Israeli forces would not be able to retrieve Matan Tsangauker alive.

"The occupation forces are besieging a place where the Zionist captive Matan Zangauker is located. We affirm categorically that the enemy will not be able to recover him alive,” Abu Obeida said in the statement posted to Telegram.

"If this prisoner is killed during an attempt to free him, the occupation army will be the one responsible for his death after we preserved his life for a year and 8 months.

"He who warns is excused," he added.

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to the message.

The Hamas statement comes hours after Israel said it had recovered the body of a Thai citizen held captive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement that the body was recovered "in a joint operation by the IDF and the Shin Bet security service on Friday".

Zangauker, an Israeli soldier, was taken captive by Hamas during the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

In May, a handwritten note by Zangauker containing his name and identity number and  was discovered in an underground tunnel by Israeli soldiers. The note was later passed to his mother, Einav, who identified it as being Matan's handwriting.

Einav criticised the Israeli government and its insistence on attempting to forcibly retrieve the remaining captives in Gaza.

"For almost 600 days, I have sounded the alarm that military pressure kills hostages. Matan was miraculously saved, but we can’t play with luck anymore," she told Haaretz at the time.

On 30 May, a report published by Haaretz revealed that at least 20 Israeli captives held in Gaza had been killed by the Israeli onslaught.

The newspaper quoted an unnamed military source as saying that "facts on the ground show that military operations have endangered the lives of 54 of them and led to the deaths of at least 20 of them".

According to Israeli estimates, there are still about 58 Israeli prisoners in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Meanwhile, more than 10,100 Palestinians are languishing in Israel's prisons, amid Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups' reports of torture, medical neglect, and starvation in the Israeli detention centres.