'Significant number' of Israeli civilians & soldiers taken hostage in Gaza

FRANCE 24 English

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00:00 Dozens of Israeli civilians, an unknown number as of yet,

00:03 they're being held hostage in Gaza.

00:05 What more can you tell us about what's been happening there?

00:08 That has actually been the most heartrending part of this event, I think,

00:16 because this morning you hear, first of all, you hear Israelis in shock,

00:21 and then you hear people ringing into radio stations to describe hearing their loved ones,

00:27 they were taken away, you know, live because they were on the phone to them,

00:31 and they said they're shooting at us and now they're taking us.

00:34 And one woman hears her son and her nephew being taken.

00:37 And there's so much chaos here that Israel has actually set up a point where people can bring

00:44 their DNA so they can determine who has been injured, i.e. who's in hospital, who's dead,

00:50 and who's been taken hostage and is presumably in Gaza, because the numbers are not known.

00:56 Hamas says it has more than 50 hostages.

00:59 Israel can't confirm that because actually people here don't know.

01:03 But I think this is, it was the heart of this operation.

01:07 It was one of the aims of this Hamas operation.

01:10 And I have heard an Israeli analyst saying they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

01:15 So now they have 50 Israelis, which includes soldiers, women, children.

01:21 I heard a man talking about his wife and his four-year-old and his two-year-old,

01:25 who are now in Hamas custody in Gaza, with Hamas saying that they're going to spread them out

01:31 everywhere that Israel would hit with airstrikes.

01:36 In other words, we'll put them with our leaders.

01:38 And the spectre of what that means, you know, will Hamas start killing them publicly?

01:43 All these things are being discussed today in horror in Israel, as at the same time

01:50 in the Israeli tradition.

01:51 The names of the soldiers who died, of the people who died,

01:55 are read out on radio.

01:56 And as you know, there's 300 names to read.

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