Mike Brest is a defense reporter at the Washington Examiner. Prior to joining the defense beat, he spent two years covering breaking news for the Examiner, and he worked at the Daily Caller in a similar capacity before that. Mike graduated from American University and is originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Hamas has threatened to execute the hostages currently in their custody due to the Israeli military's ongoing response to one of the gravest terror attacks in the country's history.
Militants from the Gaza Strip launched a sophisticated and heavily orchestrated terror attack this past weekend that left at least 700 Israelis dead, while the perpetrators also kidnapped an unknown number of Israeli civilians and brought them to the small enclave that borders the Mediterranean Sea. Hamas has claimed they have more than 100 hostages.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, warned on Al-Jazeera Arabic that they would execute hostages and broadcast it if Israel continued such strikes.“We believe in our religious and moral ethics as expressed by our chief of staff and his announcement of al-Aqsa operation. We also believe and the tenet of our faith Islam for preserving the lives of women, and children and prisoners of war," he said.
"Over the past few hours we suffered as a result of the harm inflicted on our brothers and sisters at the hands of fascist barbarian Zionist attacks targeting residential buildings," he continued."Therefore we have decided to put an end to this. From this moment on, we announce that any targeting of innocent civilians without warning will be met regretfully to say by executing one of the hostages in our custody and we will be forced to broadcast this execution.
"We're not negotiating with anyone at this time. We are in a war. And I think that this is not the time for negotiation," Lior Haiat, spokesman of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs told reporters."And we're still trying to secure a border to find out if there are any other Hamas terrorists on Israeli territory."
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