Pregnant Israeli hostage delivers to HAMAS’s baby killers

• Sarah Netanyahu seeks Jill Biden’s help

An Israeli woman is thought to have given birth while being held captive by Hamas, officials said, as a deal to secure the hostages’ release hit a “crisis.”

The woman, who has not been named, was nine-months pregnant when she was abducted with around 240 others during the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on Oct 7.

“She gave birth to her baby in Hamas captivity,” Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a letter to the US First Lady Jill Biden. “You can only imagine, as I do, what must be going through that young mother’s mind as she is being held with her newborn by these murderers,” she wrote.

The woman is only assumed to have given birth because of the time she has now been held captive. Israeli officials have received no confirmation of the fact.

Mrs Netanyahu said she was appealing to her US counterpart “first and foremost as a mother” to “speak out on behalf of these children” as she highlighted the plight of the newborn and the other Israeli children currently being held hostage.

She said that 32 children have been held in Gaza for more than five weeks, including a 10-month-old baby who was “kidnapped even before he learned how to walk or talk”.

‘Children suffering untold trauma’

The children, she said, are “suffering from untold trauma”, not only from being taken but from “having witnessed the brutal murder of their parents and siblings”.

Mrs Netanyahu said: “We must call for the immediate release of them and all those being held … the nightmare that began over a month ago must end.”

Israel has launched a widespread offensive in response to the Hamas attacks which killed 1,200 people, the deadliest attack in its history. Its aim now is to root out the terror group from Gaza.

The retaliatory strikes have killed more than 11,300 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Earlier this week, Joe Biden expressed optimism that a deal with Hamas to free the hostages, many of whom are foreign nationals, was “going to happen”.

Qatar, which is mediating the hostage talks between Israel and Hamas, sought on Wednesday to broker a deal that included the release of around 50 hostages in exchange for a multi-day ceasefire, a source told Reuters. The deal, which has been coordinated with Washington, would also reportedly see the release of some Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails and increase the humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza.

It is unclear how many Palestinian women and children Qatar proposed Israel release from its jails as part of the agreement.

The proposal would mean the biggest release of hostages to date but Arab and Palestinian sources involved in the negotiation said the talks had reached a crisis point last night. While Hamas had agreed to the general outlines of the proposed deal, Israel had rejected some elements and was demanding further negotiation, an official told Reuters.

A key point of contention was Hamas’s demand for a five-day ceasefire, according to sources cited by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Israel agreed to a three-day maximum halt, the newspaper reported.

Hamas’s demand that Israel stop flying drones over the Gaza Strip during the ceasefire also met resistance. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the US military have been flying surveillance over the coastal enclave in an effort to locate the hostages.

Hamas also reportedly requested that the IDF allow free movement between the south of the Gaza Strip and the north, where the Israeli strikes have been focused. Israel strongly opposed the demands, according to Haaretz, while Hamas is refusing to agree to compromises which could reveal its operational methods or intelligence on the location of hostages.