Militant group claims it needs ‘time’ to find all the people it abducted to Gaza.

A Hamas official said the militant group will not release hostages it took during its violent attack on October 7 until Israel agrees to a cease-fire.

Abu Hamid, a member of the Hamas delegation that visited Moscow on Thursday, told the Russian state-controlled Kommersant newspaper that the group also needs time to locate all the hostages in Gaza.

In an interview with the Russian outlet, Abu Hamid said his group “captured dozens of people, most of them civilians, and we need time to find them in the Gaza Strip and then liberate them.”