France on Wednesday welcomed the Israel-Hamas truce deal, hailing the work of Qatar in securing the agreement and saying it hoped that French nationals would be among the hostages released.
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“We hope that there are French” among the hostages that Hamas will free, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on France Inter radio, adding “we hope so and we’re working hard toward it”.

Eight French citizens have been missing since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and for the moment, it is not known if all of them are being held hostage. “We have to distinguish between the cases that we are certain about and others,” Colonna said.

Among the hostages were a French adolescent boy, and also an adolescent girl for whom France had received proof of life by video, she said.

Meyer Habib, a French deputy whose constituency of French nationals abroad includes those in Israel, told Jewish community broadcaster Radio J on Wednesday that “one or two French people” were among the hostages to be released.
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Welcoming the deal as “a moment of real hope”, Colonna hailed “particularly the work of Qatar” in clinching it after weeks of tortuous talks.

Colonna also said that Israel must do more to protect the civilian population in Gaza.

“There have been too many deaths, we have been saying this for weeks,” she said.

Civilians in the West Bank also needed to be protected better after some 200 people there had been killed by Israeli settlers, Colonna said.
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“This is unacceptable and unworthy of a democracy,” she said.

Hamas gunmen carried out on October 7 a cross-border attack, the worst in Israel’s history, that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government.

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups also took an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage, among them elderly people and young children.

In retaliation, Israel launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which the Hamas government said has killed 14,100 people, mostly civilians and thousands of them children.
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