New Delhi:

The Hamas group has circulated a video of armed men attending to babies in captivity on a channel in the instant messaging app Telegram.

The Gaza Strip-based armed group that launched a terror attack on Israel on Saturday and took some 150 people of several nationalities hostage released the propaganda video on the Telegram channel, ostensibly to show they are treating the babies well.

An infant is seen in a pram, while others appear to be in the four-six age group.

A man in camouflage battledress with an AK series assault rifle slung across his chest is seen holding a baby, whose back is resting on the gun. In the same video, a group of men is also seen pushing a pram to pacify a crying infant.

Towards the end of the video, a Hamas operative asks a child to say “Bismillah” while offering a cup of water. The child says it, and takes the cup. The same child was seen in the beginning of the video sitting on a table and crying, while a Hamas operative wrapped a bandage around his blood-stained ankle.

Israel and the US have vowed to do everything in their power to free the hostages, who are believed to be kept in Hamas hideouts across the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places in the world.

Thousands of Palestinians have fled to southern Gaza in search of refuge today after Israel warned them to evacuate before an expected ground offensive against Hamas. Hamas killed over 1,300 Israelis — most of them civilians — in an attack compared to 9/11 in the US.

Nearly 1,800 Gazans — again most of them civilians and including over 580 children — have been killed in waves of missile strikes on the densely populated enclave.

Hamas said 13 of the 150 hostages had been killed in Israeli air strikes. It has previously said four hostages died in bombardments. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, visiting Israel today, said Hamas was using residents as a “shield”.

Israeli ground forces also made “localised” raids into Gaza in the last 24 hours to “cleanse the area of terrorists and weaponry” and try to find “missing persons”, the army said.

A Reuters video journalist was killed in south Lebanon, the news agency said. Several other journalists were injured, including two from Al-Jazeera, the broadcaster said.

With inputs from AFP