A senior Hamas official has shared with the BBC a list of 34 hostages that the Palestinian group claims it is willing to release in the first phase of a potential ceasefire deal with Israel.
It is uncertain how many of those on the list are still alive.
The list includes 10 women, 11 older men aged between 50 and 85, and young children whom Hamas previously reported as having been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
The list also contains several hostages whom Hamas claims are ill.
According to reports from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, Israeli airstrikes killed over 100 people in Gaza over the weekend.
The Israeli prime minister’s office has denied claims that Hamas provided Israel with a list of hostages.
“The list of abductees published in the media was not passed on to Israel by Hamas, but was originally passed from Israel to intermediaries as early as July 2024,” it said.
“To date, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment from Hamas regarding the status of the abductees on the list.”
Hamas’s decision to release the names of hostages will be seen by some as an attempt to increase public pressure on the Israeli government.
Ceasefire negotiations resumed in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend, but the talks do not appear to have made significant progress yet.
A Hamas official told Reuters news agency any agreement to return Israeli hostages would depend on a deal for Israel to withdraw from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire or end to the war.
“However, until now, the occupation continues to be obstinate over an agreement over the issues of the ceasefire and withdrawal, and has made no step forward,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, Hamas released a video of 19-year-old Israeli captive Liri Albag, where she appealed to her government to negotiate a deal.
She was captured, along with six other female conscript soldiers, at the Nahal Oz army base on the Gaza border during Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023.
On that day, Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
As of Saturday, Israel’s military campaign to dismantle Hamas had resulted in at least 45,805 deaths in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory.
The same source reported that Israeli airstrikes killed 88 people in Gaza on Saturday, and on Sunday, Reuters quoted health officials as saying that 17 more people had died in four separate Israeli attacks on the territory.
The Israeli military confirmed on Sunday that its air force had targeted over 100 “terrorist” sites across the Gaza Strip over the weekend, resulting in the deaths of dozens of Hamas militants.