
A video released by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Monday of a captured 21-year-old Israeli girl, Mia Shem, is likely to have been recorded six days ago, India Today reported.
On Monday, Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, claimed in a statement on the Telegram app that they have hidden “dozens of hostages” in “safe places and the tunnels of the resistance”, and the number of hostages could be between “200 to 250, or exceeds.” The group also claimed that Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed 22 of the captured people.
On the same day, they also released Mia’s short video, who disappeared from the Supernova Trance music and dance festival in the southern Israeli Kibbutz of Re’im, where at least 260 people were killed on the day of the deadly assault.
The 60-second video released by the group shows several hostages. Mia is seen receiving medical treatment for a wound and later speaks about her ordeal in Gaza. “At the moment, I am in Gaza,” she can be seen saying in the video. She further added that she is being looked after in Gaza, and her arm was operated for three hours at a hospital. The video ends with her pleading to return back to Israel.
India Today’s OSINT team found that the video was likely recorded at least six days before it was released on the official Hamas Telegram channel. The report reveals that while the file's tags indicated a creation date of October 16th, certain footage segments had been recorded at least six days earlier, as indicated in the “pantry_metadata_date”. The part of the metadata shows the details of other files that make up the whole file.
Some dates found after the analysis of the released video show the date of October 10.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military rejected the claim that Hamas was taking care of children under their custody. Hamas had shared a video its Telegram channel on October 14 in which some armed terrorists can be seen “showing compassion for children”.
The Israeli military said Hamas was “trying to portray itself as a humane organisation, while it is a murderous terrorist organisation responsible for the murder and abduction of babies, women, children and elderly".
On October 7. Hamas launched one of the deadliest surprise attacks on Israel, killing more than 1300 including soldiers.
(With Bidisha Saha inputs)
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