Washington, United States – The US is using unarmed assets of the Department of Defense to help locate hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a senior US official said at a news conference.
“We are using unarmed DoD assets to try to help locate some of the American hostages,” Pentagon press secretary USAF Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. “We are going to do all we possibly can to make sure that all the hostages of all nationalities come out of Gaza.”
“There’s an active process going on here, with multiple lines of effort,” the official continued. “Hopefully in a future call we can have some good news on that but it is incredibly difficult, complex and time consuming.”
The two Americans that were able to get out of Gaza a couple of weeks ago proved it was possible, the official went on to say.
The situation in the Middle East sharply escalated following an incursion of Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 7, accompanied by killings of residents of Israeli settlements near the border and taking more than 200 hostages, including children, women and elderly people.
Hamas regards the attack as a response to Israeli actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Israel has declared a complete siege of the Gaza Strip and has started delivering strikes on that area and parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.