Khalid Mash'al states that Corporal Shalit "is alive and in good health"

25 August 2007

Bethlehem – Ma'an – Head of the Hamas politburo, Khalid Mash'al has revealed in an interview with CNN that captured Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, is alive and in good health.

The Hamas leader-in-exile said, from his office in Damascus, that the Hamas movement had made efforts to contact the soldier's family, in order to assure them that their son was physically well. His captors have given him new spectacles, it is reported.

The website of Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, however, reported that Corporal Shalit, in a statement published on a Hamas website in June, had said that "his health was deteriorating and that he was in need of long-term hospitalization."

Hamas have handed the Israeli authorities a list of some 350 Palestinian prisoners that they want released, in exchange for the release of Corporal Shalit, who was taken from his military base during an operation in June 2006. Mash'al squarely blamed the Israeli authorities in their reluctance to release Palestinian prisoners for the ongoing captivity of Cpl Shalit.