The Israeli former war cabinet minister, who left the government in June, says he and everyone in it knew the captives were staying in tunnels in Gaza “without food and hygiene”.

“We knew that they were being abused physically and mentally. We knew other things that I won’t write about.

“We knew and said that the return of the kidnapped is a priority goal over the other goals of the war, because they don’t have time,” Benny Gantz wrote on X.

Gantz, the National Unity party leader, said, “More than 30 of them died in captivity – murdered by Hamas, accidentally killed by bombs or died in other circumstances”.

“We knew then, and we know today. Anyone who says otherwise is blind or lying,” the opposition politician concluded,  Al Jazeera reported.