Hamas: Israeli 'war prisoners' wounded by 2019 bombing

GAZA City, Palestine

Hamas on Wednesday said several "Israeli prisoners" had been wounded during attacks launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip in May 2019.

In a Telegram message, Abu Ubaida, the spokesman for Hamas's military arm, said: "We announce that during the May 2019 aggression on the Gaza Strip when the enemy bombed civilian and security buildings, a number of Israeli war prisoners were directly wounded."

Without revealing the location, fate or number of the wounded "prisoners," he added that "We are careful not to reveal their fate at this stage."

"We promise our heroic [Palestinian prisoners'] families to do everything we can to liberate them [Palestinian prisoners] by all means," he said, alleging that Israel "ignored" its prisoners in Gaza and "did not care about their fate."

In April 2016, Hamas announced for the first time that it had taken four Israeli soldiers captive while withholding their identities except for Aaron Shaul, an Israeli soldier missing since the Gaza war in 2014.

At the end of the 2014 conflict, the Israeli government announced the loss of the corpses of two soldiers in the Gaza Strip, namely Aaron Shaul and Hadar Goldin.

However, in June 2016, the Israeli Ministry of Security changed its classification as "missing and captive."

*Bassel Ibrahim contributed to this report from Ankara