A 42nd Frenchman has been identified among those killed in Israel by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas during the bloody attack of October 7, the starting point of the war in Gaza, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday.
“Unfortunately, we are forced to increase the number of French victims of the attacks (October 7, Editor’s note) to 42.
We recently learned that a dual national, whose French nationality we were unaware of, was among the victims,” declared a spokesperson for the Quai d’Orsay during a press briefing.
He gave no indication of the age of the victim or the circumstances of his death and recalled that three French people remained “still hostages in the Gaza Strip”.
Around a hundred people still hostage
On October 7, Hamas commandos carried out an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data.
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Some 250 people were kidnapped, around a hundred of whom were released at the end of November during a truce in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
According to the same count, 132 hostages are still in the territory, of whom 28 are believed to have died.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas and launched a vast military operation which killed 25,700 Palestinians, the vast majority women, children and adolescents, according to the Islamist movement's Ministry of Health.