Middle East, Israeli assault on Rafah. Hamas: “No one knows how many hostages are still alive”

The US Red Sea Command said it had destroyed a Houthi drone ship and two pro-Iranian militia patrol boats, sinking them, in the Red Sea, as well as a drone in flight. This while Houthi attacks on Red Sea trade routes intensify: A Houthi missile attack seriously injured an American sailor on a merchant ship.

Meanwhile, the leader of National Unity, Benny Gantz, who resigned on Sunday from the War Cabinet of the Jewish State, says: “Israel should pay the price of a ceasefire of one or two years in the Gaza Strip for the release of all the hostages still in the hands of fundamentalists. Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, says that no one knows how many of the 116 hostages kidnapped on October 7 are still alive. Hamdan then blames Israel for the mental state of four recently rescued hostages, after a doctor said they were subjected to constant physical and emotional abuse in captivity. “I believe that if they have mental problems, it is because of what Israel did in Gaza,” Hamdan says, adding that the abductees looked better when they came out of Gaza than when they were abducted.