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About half of those hostages were released during a short-lived truce in November, but Israel says 132 of them remain in Gaza and 25 died in captivity.
The three Israelis appeared in a video broadcast by Hamas on Monday, in which the movement urged the Israeli government to stop its air and ground attack and release them.
The comment ended with the comment: “Tomorrow we will tell you their fate.”
Israeli officials generally refused to respond to Hamas' public messages about the hostages.
Forensic officials said that autopsies on the bodies of the dead hostages recovered found that the causes of death conflicted with Hamas' narrative that they died in air strikes.
Israel also made clear that it is aware of the risks to the hostages as a result of its attack and that it is taking the necessary precautions.
The bombing intensifies
As night fell, residents said that Israeli planes and tanks intensified their bombardment again across Gaza.
In Bureij in central Gaza, medics said that an Israeli missile strike killed four people and injured others, while in the Tal al-Hawa suburb of Gaza City in the north, they said that two people were killed and others were injured in an Israeli raid.
The Israeli army said it had withdrawn another contingent of troops as part of plans for more targeted operations against Hamas leaders in the south after an initial comprehensive attack focused on the densely populated northern end of the Strip.
Israeli soldiers pictured in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, where ground operations are increasingly being directed.credit: AP
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, speaking at around the same time as the second hostage video, said that intense military operations in southern Gaza had almost ended, but Hamas would not agree to release more hostages without military pressure.
The armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said that its fighters ambushed and killed five Israeli soldiers in the city of Khan Yunis in the south of the country. Palestinian health officials had previously said that seven people were killed and others wounded in an Israeli air strike near Nasser Hospital in the city.
Health officials say that the campaign launched by Israel in Gaza since the Hamas attack on October 7 has turned most of the Palestinian territories into barren land, killing about 24,000 people and wounding about 61,000.
Health officials said 132 people were killed in the past 24 hours, signaling to Palestinians that there has been little lull in the intensity of Israel's offensive despite its announcement of a shift to a new, more targeted phase.
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Violence spreads
Nearly two million displaced people are taking shelter in tents and other temporary accommodation in southern Gaza amid the fighting, facing increasing risks of famine and disease due to chronic shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
The conflict, which has been ongoing for more than three months, has led to an intensification of violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Middle East on a broader scale, and on Monday it reached inside Israel.
Palestinians carried out coordinated car ramming attacks in the central Israeli town of Raanana, killing a woman and wounding 12 others, police and medical officials said. France said that two of its citizens were among those infected.
Police said the suspects were from the same family in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and that at least one of the vehicles used in the attacks was stolen.
Sami Abu Zuhri, head of Hamas' political unit in exile, told Reuters that the events are linked to Israeli “crimes” and are further evidence that the conflict is expanding.
Violence also erupted in the West Bank, administered by the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, where the Health Ministry says 351 people were killed when Israel launched raids it says are aimed at expelling militants.
Today, Monday, a man and a woman were killed by Israeli occupation bullets in Dura, near Hebron, during what the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said were confrontations that broke out after Israeli forces raided the town. In a separate incident, Wafa said that Palestinian security officer Mahmoud Abdullah Khalifa was killed near the city of Tulkarm in the West Bank.
Further away, Houthi fighters, who control much of Yemen, have intensified their attacks on ships in the Red Sea, which they say are linked to Israel, out of what they say is solidarity with the people of Gaza.
On Monday, they damaged a US-owned ship carrying steel products with an anti-ship ballistic missile south of the Yemeni port of Aden, saying they were expanding their targets after US and British air strikes on their positions in Yemen.
Reuters
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