Could be Chechen fringe separatist group. or Ingushetia.

Sadly that’s the way things are done when their own survival are at stake. Emotion and moral are not much considered in (their) strategic decision making. People are just pawns on the chessboard.

treating the hostages as merely bargaining chips ignores that they are innocent civilians caught in this idiotic conflict through no fault of their own.

The way I see it if we look at Hamas side - That’s the only bargaining chips that Hamas has. They’ve got nothing else, nil. Hamas is very dependent on the hostages and they know they would receive greater retaliation from the Israeli after the Oct 7 attack if they didn’t have any hostages. During the attack, the strategy is basically two prongs - get rid of the soldiers, and get as many hostages alive so we can still survive (yes, some hostages did get killed during the real due to some reasons such as miscommunication during the execution of their operations by separate fringe parties). For that very reason, they try to keep the hostages alive because the moment they lost their hostages without any meaningful peace deal, they are basically done.