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Bodies of a father and his son, hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, found by Israeli forces

Yosef al-Ziadna and his son Hamza, two Muslim citizens of Israel, were found by the Israeli military in a tunnel in southern Gaza and taken back to the Jewish state. "We were hopeful that they were still alive," expressed a family member.

Israeli soldiers in GazaIsrael Defense Forces / AFP.

Published by
Leandro Fleischer

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported Wednesday that they found the bodies of two Israeli hostages held by the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip a day earlier.

Yosef Al-Ziadna (54) and his son Hamza (23), two Muslim Israelis residing in the Bedouin town of Rahat in Israel, were found in a tunnel in southern Gaza during an IDF operation and taken back to the Jewish state.

While the IDF had already operated in the area, they returned there following new intelligence recently obtained, Israeli media reported.

The family of the hostages found claimed that Yosef and Hamza were held together and found in the same place.

Yosef and Hamza's abduction during the Oct. 7 massacre

Yosef and Hamza were kidnapped during the Oct. 7 massacre by Palestinian terrorists while they were working at Kibbutz Holit in southern Israel, along with Aisha and Bilal, Yosef's other children.

'We were hopeful that they were still alive'

Ali al-Ziadna, Yosef's brother and Hamza's uncle, expressed, "We were hopeful that they were still alive. Today, after receiving the news that they were found, we didn't accept it right away and said, 'Verify, maybe you are wrong, maybe they are alive. Don't rush.' In the end, there was nothing left but to accept the painful news that broke our hearts," Israeli newspaper Ynet reported.

Last March, Ali al-Ziadna attended a special session of the U.N. Security Council on the report of sex crimes committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 and confronted Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansur. "I speak in anger. It cannot be that Hamas claims to be Muslim, while my brother is Muslim, fasts as they fast and prays as they pray, and yet they kidnap him and do not want to return him," Ali al-Ziadna said.

After the release of Aisha and Bilal, their relatives said, "From what we heard, Hamas didn't care who they kidnapped, Jew or Arab. For them, any abductee could help in their demands. They were the four of them alone in a room. They didn't know if they were in a house or in a tunnel. They were given meals regularly and heard explosions all the time," per Ynet.

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