Tanzania on Sunday morning announced the death of one of two nationals taken hostage by Hamas during the 7th of October attacks on Israel.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the Israeli government had named two students from Tanzania — 22-year-old Clemence Felix Mtenga and 21-year-old Joshua Loitu Mollel — among some 240 taken to the Gaza Strip.
‘It’s with great sadness we confirm the death of Clemence Felix Mtenga,’ a foreign ministry statement said late Friday.
It did not say how Mtenga died.
‘We would also like to inform the public that Joshua is still missing as we continue to follow his whereabouts,’ the ministry said.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the October 7 attacks which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw about 240 hostages taken.
The army’s air and ground campaign has since killed 12,000 people, including 5,000 children, according to the Hamas government which has ruled Gaza since 2007.
In another report, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the week warned there is no safe place for the Hamas militants behind the 7th of October attacks and ‘no place in Gaza’ the army wouldn’t reach.
He made this assertion hours after troops raided the territory’s biggest hospital.
In his words; ‘They told us we wouldn’t reach the outskirts of Gaza City and we did, they told us we wouldn’t enter Al-Shifa (hospital) and we did’.
‘There is no place in Gaza that we won’t reach.’
In another report, US President Joe Biden has said he had made it clear to Netanyahu that occupying Gaza would be “a big mistake” and that the two-state solution was the only way to bring an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“I made it clear to the Israelis I think it’s a big mistake for them to think they’re going to occupy Gaza and maintain Gaza,” Biden told a news conference in San Francisco. “I don’t think that works.”
Netanyahu said earlier this month that after the war Gaza would have to be “demilitarised, deradicalised and rebuilt” and that Israel would need to find a “civilian government” to govern the enclave, which has been run by Hamas since 2006.