THE ARMED WING of Hamas has published “farewell” photographs of most of the remaining hostages in Gaza, warning that Israel’s assault on Gaza City will endanger them.

Despite calls from abroad and in Israel not to wage his planned offensive in Gaza City, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pressed on with the full-scale assault on the Palestinian territory’s largest population centre. 

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the city since Israel began ground operations on Tuesday, which followed days of relentless bombardment. 

Israeli strikes killed at least 14 people overnight in Gaza City, health officials said.

Buildings destroyed by Israeli attacks in the northern Gaza Strip Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

With the images released today, Hamas evoked the case of an Israeli pilot missing since 1986 after his plane went down over Lebanon. Each of the photos shared by Hamas is captioned with the pilot’s name, Ron Arad.

Of the 251 people seized by Palestinian militants during their attack on Israel in October 2023, 47 remain in Gaza, including 25 the Israeli military says are dead.

“Due to Netanyahu’s obstinacy and (military chief Eyal) Zamir’s submission…. a farewell photograph taken at the start of the operation in Gaza” City, the Brigades wrote alongside the photos.

The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades released 46 photographs of hostages on its Telegram channel, each one labelled with the name of Ron Arad, an Israeli air force navigator whose plane went down over southern Lebanon in 1986 during the Lebanese civil war.

Arad was believed to have been initially held by Shiite groups in Lebanon and is now presumed dead. His remains have never been returned.

He has been a cause célèbre for decades in Israel, where bringing home lost or captured soldiers is considered a national duty.

There are protests planned again this evening in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, organised by the friends and families of those held captive in Gaza. 

The protests, which have become a regular occurrence in Israeli cities in the last two years, are organised with the aim of pressuring the government into negotiating their release. 

The group representing the families of hostages said today:

“The writing is on the wall! There will be no other time to save our loved ones who have been languishing in tunnels for 715 days.”

“The writing is on the wall! There will be no other time to save our loved ones who have been languishing in tunnels for 715 days.”

Join us tonight, Saturday, September 20
📌 8:00 PM - Hostages Square, Tel Aviv
📌 8:30 PM - Paris Square, Jerusalem

🚨 We cannot sacrifice the… pic.twitter.com/ThI6R9bsle

— Bring Them Home Now (@bringhomenow) September 20, 2025

The Israeli military, which says it wants to “destroy Hamas’s military infrastructure”, has not given a timeline for the offensive, but there were indications it could take months.

Dr Rami Mhanna, the managing director of Shifa Hospital, where some of the dead from today’s strikes were brought, said they included six people from the same family after a strike hit their home early on Saturday morning.

They were relatives of the hospital’s director, Dr Mohamed Abu Selmiya, he said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said five other people were killed in another strike close to Shawa Square.

Israel’s military said it could not comment on the specific strikes without more information, but that it was “operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities” and “takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.

Israel’s siege, bombardment and invasion of Gaza over the past 23 months has killed more than 65,000 people, destroyed vast areas of the strip, displaced around 90% of the population and caused a humanitarian crisis and famine.

Israel’s full-scale assault on Gaza City comes ahead of a high-stakes UN General Assembly meeting in New York next week, where a number of European countries are expected to recognise Palestinian statehood, something Israel completely opposed. 

A recent conclusion of a UN commission of investigation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, although not the first body to do so, appears to have spurred some Western states to take action. 

This week, the European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, announced it would freeze bilateral financial support for Israel and proposed the suspension of its favourable trade agreement with the bloc. 

Also this week, President Michael D Higgins said that Israel should be expelled from the UN for committing genocide. While the Irish government has described Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip as genocidal, a government spokesperson said the president’s remarks did not reflect official Irish policy. 

With reporting from AFP and Press Association 

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