Hamas Claims 86-Year-Old Hostage Dies of Heart Attack in Captivity

Hamas claimed Friday that an 86-year-old man held hostage by the terror group died of a heart attack while in captivity.

Arye Zalmanovich was among the approximately 240 people believed abducted from Israel during Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 terror attacks.

In a video released Friday, Hamas claimed that Zalmanovich suffered a fatal heart attack amid shelling near the location where he was being held hostage.

The claim of Zalmanovich’s death and its purported circumstances could not immediately be verified independently.

It came one day after Israeli troops operating in Gaza found the body of another hostage, 64-year-old Yehudit Weiss, who was battling breast cancer when she was abducted.

Zalmanovich helped found the community of Kibbutz Nir Oz near the Israel-Gaza border, which saw some of the worst carnage of the Oct. 7 attacks, according to Israel's Haaretz newspaper.

“For 60 years, he got up every day at 4:30 a.m. and went out to plow, sow and harvest," said Zalmanovich's son, Boaz, during an October demonstration calling for the hostages' release, according to Haaretz.

"Even in the driest years, when there was nothing to eat, and even when the [rocket sirens] and mortar shells gave him 10 seconds to reach a safe room, he refused to leave the kibbutz.”

Hamas terrorists finally did what those lean years and mortar strikes couldn't when they streamed over the border on Oct. 7, indiscriminately killing some 1,200 people — mostly unarmed civilians — and abducting an estimated 240 back to Gaza.

In addition to Zalmanovich, those taken include a pregnant woman who has now given birth in captivity, a security guard being sought by his two soldier brothers, and an Irish-Israeli girl marking her ninth birthday as a hostage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that a deal was in the works to free at least some of the hostages held by Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups, but has declined to publicly share details.