Satirical ITV series about war hostages starring Sean Penn is postponed ‘until further notice’ after Hamas fighters attacked Israel
The release of a satirical TV series about war hostages starring Sean Penn has been delayed by ITV ‘in light of current events’ after Hamas fighters attacked Israel.
Comedy C*A*U*G*H*T follows four Australian soldiers sent on a secret mission to a war-torn country where they are mistaken for Americans, captured and appear in a hostage video that goes viral.
According to the show’s synopsis: ‘When the soldiers reach celebrity status, they realise that being caught might just be the best thing that could have happened to them.’
The programme also stars Lost actor Matthew Fox, as well as series creator Kick Gurry.
It had been due to launch on streaming service ITVX on October 12.
Delay: The release of a satirical TV series about war hostages starring Sean Penn has been postponed by ITV ‘in light of current events’
Fighting: A man runs on a road as fire burns after rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip
A statement from ITV said: ‘In light of current events, the launch date of C*A*U*G*H*T on ITVX will be delayed until further notice. We will be in touch when a new streaming date is confirmed.’
The show has also reportedly pulled out of TV trade show Mipcom in Cannes, France.
Penn, 63, serves as an executive producer and plays himself in the series.
At least two Britons have been killed after Hamas fighters attacked Israel, with another feared dead and more missing.
The Palestinian militant group – which is banned as a terrorist organisation by the UK Government – sent fighters across the border to Israel and fired thousands of rockets in an unprecedented attack on Saturday, which also saw a music festival targeted.
More than 900 people have been killed in Israel, according to the Israeli military, with authorities in Gaza saying about 700 have been killed in the territory and the West Bank, with dozens more taken hostage by Hamas.
Since the weekend’s atrocities, Israel has sealed the Gaza Strip off from food, fuel, medicine and other supplies, while launching retaliatory air strikes on the Hamas-ruled territory, which is home to 2.3 million people.
Hamas has pledged to kill captured Israeli hostages if attacks target civilians in Gaza without warnings.
Postponed: Comedy C*A*U*G*H*T follows four Australian soldiers sent on a secret mission to a war-torn country
Hamas today warned Israeli civilians to get out of the port city of Ashkelon now or face death ‘in response to the airstrikes’ that are relentlessly pounding the Gaza strip, suggesting that more bloodshed is imminent.
The terrorists also refused to hand over Israeli hostages until the fighting ends – a day after they threatened to execute Israeli civilian captives if the airstrikes continued.
It comes after Israel warned Hamas they had ‘nowhere to hide’ and that its air force was launching ‘extensive attacks’ on the Palestinian terrorist group every four hours in revenge for its deadly surprise incursion that saw more than 1,000 Israelis slaughtered.
On Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared intentions to obliterate Hamas as he metes out revenge for the deadly surprise attacks by the Palestinian militant group this weekend that saw hundreds of Israelis killed.
Netanyahu, who first came to power in Israel in 1996 and has served three separate terms, compared Hamas to the Islamic State group and said Israel planned to deploy ‘unprecedented force’ that would ‘reverberate for generations’.
Violence: A fireball is pictured erupting from an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 9
Devastation: A view of the rubble of buildings hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, on Tuesday
‘We have only started striking Hamas,’ Netanyahu, 73, said in a nationally televised address late last night.
‘What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.
‘Hamas terrorists bound, burned and executed children. They are savages. Hamas is ISIS,’ Netanyahu concluded.
Thousands of Hamas targets have been wiped out in brutal aerial bombing campaigns, Israeli defence officials claimed, but harrowing clips circulating social media showed how the rockets and bombs also obliterated Palestinian residential blocks, killing hundreds of civilians.
Military spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters on Tuesday that the bodies of some 1,500 Hamas militants had been found around the Gaza border following strikes, adding that security forces had ‘more or less restored control over the border’ with Gaza.
Israel also ordered a ‘complete siege’ of Gaza, cutting off electricity, fuel and food for the 2.3 million Palestinians who for the most part were already living in abject poverty.
The four-day-old war has already claimed at least 1,600 lives, as Israel saw gun battles in the streets of its own towns for the first time in decades and neighbourhoods in Gaza were reduced to rubble.
In a response to the savage aerial bombardment of Gaza, Hamas warned late last night it would begin executing Israeli civilian captives.
Horror: Rockets are fired towards Israel from the Gaza Strip
Israeli soldiers walk through the remains of a residential area of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, on Tuesday
‘Every targeting of our people without warning will be met with the execution of one of the civilian hostages,’ Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement.
Hamas militants abducted up to 150 people, including women and children, from Israeli territory and dragged them back in Gaza amid their ruthless slaughter.
‘We have decided to put an end to this and as of now, we declare that any targeting of our people in their homes without prior warning will be regrettably faced with the execution of one the hostages of civilians we are holding,’ Abu Obaida, spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, later added in a recording released to Al Jazeera.
On Tuesday morning, air raid sirens were blaring in cities across Israel, suggesting Hamas was launching another salvo of rockets.
Israel and Hamas have had repeated conflicts in past years, often sparked by tensions around a Jerusalem holy site.
But this time, the context has become more explosive.
The surprise weekend attack by Hamas left a death toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria, fomenting calls for Israel to crush Hamas no matter the cost, rather than continuing to try to bottle it up in Gaza.
Israel is run by its most hard-right government ever, dominated by ministers who adamantly reject Palestinian statehood.
Hamas, in turn, says it is ready for a long battle to end an Israeli occupation it says is no longer tolerable. Desperation has grown among Palestinians, many of whom see nothing to lose under unending Israeli control and increasing settler depredations in the West Bank, the blockade in Gaza and what they see as the world’s apathy.
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