Emmanuel Macron expressed his “immense sadness” after the announcement of the death of the Franco-Mexican Hamas hostage, Orión Hernández-Radoux, whose body was recovered overnight by the Israeli army alongside those of two other hostages.
“I learned with immense sadness of the death of our compatriot Orión Hernández-Radoux, hostage of Hamas since October 7. I think of his family and those close to him. We are at their side. France remains more than ever committed to the release of all the hostages», Wrote the President of the Republic on X.
Orión Hernández-Radoux is the 43rd French victim of the assault by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7 in Israel, which resulted in the death of more than 1,170 people. Two French hostages have now remained detained for more than seven months.
The Israeli army announced Friday that it had recovered the bodies of three hostages held in the Gaza Strip, after a “joint operation” by the army and Israeli intelligence services in Jabalia, in the north of the warring territory.
121 people still detained in Gaza
Traveling to Valencia, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal “sent (s)his thoughts and (s)his solidarity to his family, his friends to his loved ones“. “It is a tragedy which firstly reminds us of the scale of the massacre and the terrorist attack committed by Hamas. It is a tragedy which reminds us that we still have two French hostages who are being held in the Gaza Strip“, he added, affirming that “our absolute priority is obviously to achieve their release so that they can find their loved ones in safety“.
In addition to that of Orión Hernández-Radoux, the bodies of Israeli Chanan Yablonka and Israeli-Brazilian Michel Nisenbaum were found. These three men were among 124 people still held in Gaza, out of the 252 kidnapped on October 7. The number of hostages still held now stands at 121, of whom 37 are dead, according to the Israeli army.
On October 7, Orión Hernández-Radoux attended the Tribe of Nova music festival in southern Israel when Hamas fighters attacked. In an interview with AFP in January, his French mother Marie-Pascale Radoux, a painter based in Labastide-Saint-George, near Toulouse, asked “to Hamas to take care of (his) son, because he had physical weaknesses“.
