Following breakdown of talks, US says it will keep pushing to restore pause and get hostages out

US President Joe Biden's administration will “pursue every effort” to secure the release of the hostages that Hamas is holding in Gaza, including American citizens who remain unaccounted for, a senior administration official said on the heels of negotiations in Doha, Qatar, breaking down.

The White House has said there is one American woman and seven men unaccounted for following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

So far, four Americans have been released since the start of the war: 4-year-old Abigail Edan on November 26;  Liat Beinin on November 29; and Judith Tai Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie Raanan, on October 20.

As CNN previously reported, US and Israeli officials believe Hamas is refusing to release a number of women in their 20s and 30s taken at the Nova music festival — claiming that those women are considered soldiers, which Israel denies. 

“The onus is on Hamas to live up to its terms of the deal and release these young women without delay,” the official said. 

The refusal not only violates the terms of the deal initially struck by Israel and Hamas, but is “totally unacceptable” given “credible allegations of sexual violence linked to Hamas and the October 7 atrocities,” the official said.

CNN has reported that Israeli police are using forensic evidence, video and witness testimony and interrogations of suspects to document cases of rape amid the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Women and girls caught in the rampage were brutalized sexually, as well as physically tortured and killed, witnesses to the aftermath say.

Police Superintendent Dudi Katz said officers have collected more than 1,000 statements and more than 60,000 video clips related to the attacks that include accounts from people who reported seeing women raped. He added that investigators do not have firsthand testimony, and it is not clear whether any rape victims survived.