Author: Maayan Lubell and Nidal al-Mughrabi
JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) – Israeli forces on Saturday freed four hostages held by Hamas since October in a raid in Gaza that Palestinian officials said killed more than 200 people, the latest of eight One of the bloodiest Israeli attacks of the month-long war.
The hostage rescue operation and the heavy airstrikes that followed took place in Nuserat, central Gaza, a densely populated and often troubled settlement in the conflict between Israel and the Islamist ruling group Hamas in the Palestinian territories. area.
An Israeli military spokesman said the operation took place in the heart of a residential area in Nuserat, where Hamas was holding hostages in two separate apartment buildings. Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces came under heavy fire during the attack and responded by firing “from the air and on the streets.”
“As far as we know, there are less than 100 (Palestinian) casualties. I don’t know how many of them are terrorists,” he said while briefing reporters. An Israeli special forces commander was killed during the operation, a police statement said.
Medical staff and residents in Gaza said the attack killed dozens of people and left the mutilated bodies of men, women and children scattered around markets and mosques.
Israel named the rescued hostages as 26-year-old Noa Argamani, 22-year-old Almog Meir Jan, 27-year-old Andrei Kozlov (Andrey Kozlov) and 41-year-old Shlomi Ziv.
They were all abducted during the Nova music festival after Palestinian militants led by Hamas launched deadly attacks on Israeli towns and villages near Gaza on October 7, leading to the devastating war.
Hamas’ attacks killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, while Israel’s subsequent bombing and invasion of Gaza has killed at least 36,801 Palestinians, according to the region’s health ministry’s latest tally on Saturday.
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On October 7, gunmen brought about 250 hostages back to Gaza, and more than 100 of them were released in exchange for about 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons during the week-long truce in November. According to Israeli statistics, there are 116 hostages remaining in the coastal enclave, at least 40 of whom were declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for the Hamas armed Qassam Brigades, said some hostages were killed during the rescue operation.
“This is a blatant lie,” Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner told CNN.
Asked about news reports that U.S. intelligence was supporting the rescue operation, Lerner said Israel and the U.S. had a “close, close working relationship” on intelligence but declined to elaborate.
As Israel’s assault on Gaza advances, attempts by the United States and regional countries to reach an agreement to release all remaining hostages in exchange for a ceasefire have repeatedly failed. A fresh wave of airstrikes hit homes in the southern city of Rafah late Saturday, residents and Hamas officials said.
Israel’s News 12 broadcast footage of Agamani’s reunion with her father, where she smiled and hugged him. Video of Agamani’s abduction shows her shouting “Don’t kill me!” Shortly after she was taken away on October 7, news spread that she was taken into Gaza on a motorcycle.
Video released by the president’s office showed a smiling Agamani talking to Israeli President Isaac Herzog on the phone from the hospital, surrounded by family and friends.
“Thank you for everything, thank you for this moment,” she said.
“I’m so excited to hear your voice, it brings tears to my eyes… Welcome home,” Herzog said.
Poland praised the rescue of the hostages and said one of them was a dual Israeli-Polish citizen.
US President Joe Biden welcomed the return of the four hostages rescued in Gaza. “We will not stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached,” Biden told a news conference in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Following the hostage rescue, Israel’s centrist war cabinet minister Benny Gantz postponed a statement on Saturday in which he was widely expected to announce his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government. Gantz gave the conservative prime minister a June 8 deadline to develop a clear post-war strategy for Gaza.
bloody scenes
A different picture emerged in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian health ministry officials and local medical staff said an Israeli military attack on Nuserrat killed dozens.
The ministry did not say how many of the dead were combatants.
The media office of the Hamas-controlled Gaza government later said the death toll had risen to at least 210 Palestinians, with many more injured, after medics and health officials earlier put the death toll at as high as 100. Gaza’s health ministry did not immediately confirm the top figure.
Social media videos that Reuters could not immediately verify showed the body’s entrails scattered on a blood-stained street.
“It was like a horror movie, but it was a real massacre. Israeli drones and warplanes were firing randomly at people’s houses and people trying to flee the area all night long,” said 45-year-old paramedic No. said Ziad, a resident of Serat.
He told Reuters via a messaging app that the bombing was focused on local markets and the Awada mosque. “In order to free four people, Israel killed dozens of innocent civilians,” he said.
Ziad and other residents said emergency teams tried to transport the dead and injured to hospitals in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, but many bodies still lay in the streets, including around the market area.
Nuserat is a historic Palestinian refugee camp that suffered heavy Israeli bombing during the war, with heavy ground fighting also taking place in its eastern areas.
Israeli airstrikes killed five Palestinians in the Burij refugee camp in the central Gaza corridor late on Saturday, Palestinian medics said.
The war has destabilized the entire Middle East, attracting Hamas’ main backer Iran and its heavily armed Lebanese ally Hezbollah, with whom Israeli officials have threatened war on Israel’s northern border.
