Two British teenage girls are among the hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas, Israel’s ambassador to the UK said on Monday.
The teens, aged 13 and 16, were kidnapped by terrorists during an attack last weekend which saw their mother shot, Tzipi Hotovely claimed.
The ambassador told Sky News: “We want the international community to make sure Hamas will bring back home all those kidnapped people, including British citizens. Yesterday I got a phone call from Israeli citizens. It said the mother was shot, and two teenage girls, 13 and 16, are kept hostage in Gaza. British citizens.”
The Israel Defense Forces has so far notified the families of 199 hostages that relatives are being held in the Gaza Strip, a spokesman said.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on Sunday indicated that about 10 British people were snatched by terrorists.
He described the figure as “not an unreasonable estimate”, but the Foreign Office are yet to confirm exactly how many UK citizens have been captured.
Ms Hotovely also insisted Israel was not responsible for any humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where food, water and medical supplies are running dangerously low after Tel Aviv cut power and aid to the region and told over one million Palestinians to move to the south as it prepares a ground offensive.
“Israel is in charge of the safety of Israelis, Hamas is in charge of the safety of the Palestinians,” Ms Hotovely said.
When pressed over images showing desperate Palestinians attempting to flee their homes, she replied: “What would you think if your children had been executed in front of your eyes?
“Would you expect your government to think about those Nazis committing those crimes and then say ‘first of all we need to protect the enemy, and then we need to protect your children’?”
“What is happening is there is a war in Gaza that Hamas started by committing a horrible massacre.”
It comes as distressing images of an eight-year-old Israeli girl and her 15-year-old sister captured and held hostage by Hamas prompted an emotional appeal from their mother for their safe release.
Maayan Zin said her daughters Ella and Dafna had been caught up in “a pogrom” and “a nightmare” after seeing a video of their plight posted by the militants online.
The pair were captured with their father Noam, his partner Dikla and her 17-year-old son Tomer at Kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel during the murderous attack by Hamas, which has led to around 1,400 deaths in Israel.
One of the images shows eight-year-old Ella looking afraid and being cuddled protectively by her father’s partner, while her 15-year-old sister Dafna sits in the background with her hand over her face.
Ms Zin said she had been sent the footage from a Gaza news site. He said he believed that it showed her daughters and the rest of the family at an unknown location in Gaza as she pleaded for their safe return.
“I need my daughters. I need the world to see us. My daughters are just two girls. They have woken up to a nightmare. They have woken up to a pogrom,” she told the Jewish News newspaper.
She added: “The article says the picture is from Gaza but we are not 100 percent sure.”
Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told BBC Radio 4 that the hostages must be released immediately.
“There has been no movement, this is crucial, on the release of the hostages,” he said. “The taking of those hostages was an egregious, illegal, unacceptable, immoral act. They must be released. Imagine children as hostages, playing that role.”
