Families of the hostages have been putting pressure on Israeli authorities for their release. (document)
Jerusalem:
About 100 representatives of the Gaza hostages flew to The Hague on Wednesday to lodge a complaint against Hamas for “crimes against humanity” with the International Criminal Court.
According to Israeli officials, Palestinian militants led by Hamas kidnapped about 250 hostages during an attack on Israel on October 7, of which about 130 are still being held in Gaza.
Twenty-nine of them are believed to have died.
“This is not just our story. If we don’t stop this, tomorrow it will be the story of the whole world,” said Ofori Bibas, whose brother is one of the prisoners held in Gaza.
“All of humanity must unite against a global army of terror, of which Hamas is just one force carrying out its mission,” she said minutes before boarding a flight to The Hague.
Haim Rubinstein of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the activist group would file a case against Hamas leaders at the International Criminal Court.
“We are the families of the hostages who have been through and are still going through this horrific hell,” Rubinstein told a televised briefing at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.
“We will prosecute Hamas members and their collaborators and ensure they pay the heaviest price for the crimes against humanity they continue to commit.”
Agence France-Presse, based on official Israeli data, said attacks by Hamas, which launched the war, killed about 1,160 people in Israel, most of them civilians.
According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, at least 28,473 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s response.
The families of the hostages have continued to put pressure on the Israeli authorities to release the remaining hostages.
Their latest attempt came as Israeli intelligence chief David Bania met with CIA Director William Burns in the Egyptian capital on Tuesday for talks on a Qatar-brokered plan to halt the fighting in Gaza.
The talks, which were also attended by Qatar’s prime minister and Egyptian officials, were part of an intensified Israeli effort to secure a ceasefire ahead of a ground invasion of the southern city of Rafah, where more than half the population has fled.
The International Criminal Court is the world’s only independent court established to investigate the most serious crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, on Monday called for the release of all hostages in the Gaza Strip, while also expressing concern about a possible Israeli invasion of Rafah.
Khan said on X (formerly Twitter) that his office’s investigation into the incident in Gaza “is being conducted as a matter of utmost urgency”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
