03-08-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
'No special food privilege': Hamas says it will allow ICRC access to Israeli hostages if aid enters Gaza
Palestinian group Hamas said Sunday that it would allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to provide aid to Israeli hostages on the condition that humanitarian corridors are opened to Gaza, where at least 175 Palestinians have starved to death amid Israel's blockade.
"(We) are ready to respond positively to) any request by the Red Cross to deliver food and medicine to enemy prisoners. However, we condition our acceptance on the opening of humanitarian corridors... for the passage of food and medicine... across all areas of the Gaza Strip," Hamas's military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, wrote in a statement.
Hamas stressed that no special food privileges can be given for Israeli hostages amid Israel's "crime of starvation and siege."
"(Hamas) does not intentionally starve the captives, but they eat the same food our fighters and the general public eat. They will not receive any special privileges amid the crime of starvation and siege," the statement said.
The response came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested that the ICRC help provide food to the hostages held in Gaza, and after the agency issued a "call to be granted access to the hostages" in a statement posted on X.
The Israeli PM's appeal came hours after a staff member of the ICRC, Omar Mansour Isleem, was killed by the Israeli military in an overnight attack on Gaza's Khan Yunis.
"It is unacceptable that first responders in Gaza – like Omar and staff and volunteers of the PRCS – go to work every day fearing they may not return to their families," the organisation said in a condolence message posted on X.
"It is an outrage that so many staff and volunteers of the PRCS and other first responders have been killed and injured in the last 21 months of the conflict," the ICRC said, adding that humanitarian personnel "must never be attacked."
