A member of Hamas delegation, who is on a visit to Moscow, has declared that the Palestinian militant out will not release any more hostages until a ceasefire is agreed, Russian media reported on Friday.

Hamas took more than 226 hostages from Israel during their brutal assault on October 7, in which more than 1,400 people were also murdered by its militants.

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According to Russian newspaper Kommersant, Hamas representative Abu Hamid, who met Russian authorities in Moscow, said that the group will need time to locate all the hostages who are being kept at different locations across the Gaza Strip.

“They seized dozens of people, most of them civilians, and we need time to find them in the Gaza Strip and then release them,” Hamid was quoted as saying.

So far, Hamas has released four hostages on what it called “humanitarian grounds”. Hamas first released Judith and Natalie Raanan, American mother and daughter on the intervening night of October 20 and 21. It was followed by the release of two more elderly Israeli women – 85-year-old Yocheved Lifschitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper – on Monday.

The development comes a day after Hamas announced some 50 hostages have been killed since Israeli air strikes began. However, the claim could not be verified but Israel had termed a similar claim made earlier this month as “fake propaganda”, saying it has its own information on hostages.

The development comes as Israel looks all set to launch a full-scale ground assault in Gaza. The Israeli military today said that it carried out fresh “overnight raid” in the Gaza Strip and struck Hamas targets.

The Israel Defence Forces or IDF said that dozens of Hamas targets were struck in the past 24 hours as it continued its targeted raids in central area of the Gaza Strip.

“Ground forces accompanied by fighter jets and drones struck targets in the Shuja’iyya area. Other sites throughout the Gaza Strip were also hit,” the IDF said in a statement.

The Israeli Army also claimed to have killed a top Hamas commander, who helped plan the brutal October 7 attacks. The IDF has said that its targeted raids in Gaza are part of its “preparations for the next stage of the war” – a full-scale ground invasion.