Dozens of families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza stormed a meeting in the Israeli parliament to demand measures to release their relatives.
They entered the Finance Committee meeting in the Knesset in Jerusalem and chanted, “You will not sit here while they die there!”
One woman held up photos of three family members who had been taken and said: “Only one would I like to come back alive, one out of three!”
Other demonstrators chanted: “Release them now, now, now!”
On Sunday night, family members set up a protest tent in Jerusalem and pledged to remain there until the government reached an agreement to release some of the hostages.
Hamas took about 250 hostages when it invaded across the border on October 7. About 130 of them remain in Gaza after others were returned to their homes as part of a truce in November.
The attack led to the worst fighting in decades, with the initial Hamas attack killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
The Israeli attack killed at least 21,105 Palestinians in Gaza and injured more than 60,000, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and fighters, but says that about two-thirds of those killed were women and children.
The Israeli army says it killed about nine thousand militants without providing evidence. It blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because it deploys its fighters, tunnels and other armed infrastructure in densely populated residential areas.
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