Israeli forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas since October in a raid in Gaza on Saturday that Palestinian officials said killed more than 200 people, one of the single bloodiest Israeli assaults of the eight-month-old war.
The hostage rescue operation and an intense accompanying air assault took place in central Gaza’s al-Nuseirat, a densely built-up and often embattled area in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian territory’s ruling Islamist group.
An Israeli military spokesperson said the operation took place in the heart of a residential neighbourhood in Nuseirat where Hamas had kept the hostages in two separate apartment blocks. Israel’s forces came under intense fire during the assault and responded by firing “from the air and from the street”, spokesman rear admiral Daniel Hagari said.
“We know about under 100 [Palestinian] casualties. I don’t know how many from them are terrorists,” Hagari said. An Israeli special forces commander was killed during the operation, a police statement said.
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The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said the assault killed at least 210 people and left about 400 wounded.
Following the strikes and hostage rescue, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called for an emergency United Nations Security Council session on “the bloody massacre that was carried out by the Israeli forces”, news agency WAFA reported on Saturday.
The Israeli military named the rescued hostages as Noa Argamani (25), Almog Meir Jan (21), Andrey Kozlov (27), and Shlomi Ziv (40). They were taken to hospital for medical checks and were in good health, the military said.
They were all kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the deadly raid by Hamas-led Palestinian militants on Israeli towns and villages near Gaza on October 7th, which precipitated the devastating war.
The Hamas raid killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed at least 36,801 Palestinians, according to an updated tally by the territory’s ministry for health on Saturday.
Gunmen took about 250 hostages back to Gaza on October 7th, more than 100 of whom were released in exchange for about 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails during a weeklong truce in November. There are 116 hostages left in the coastal enclave, according to Israeli tallies, including at least 40 whom Israeli authorities have declared dead in absentia.
The spokesperson for Hamas’ armed al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubaida, said some hostages were killed during the rescue operation.
Speaking on Saturday, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel does not give into terrorism and that it is operating “creatively and bravely” to bring home the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. “We are committed to do so in the future as well. We will not let up until we complete the mission and return home all the hostages – both those alive and dead,” Mr Netanyahu said.
Attempts by the United States and regional countries to forge a deal that would release all remaining hostages in return for a ceasefire have repeatedly failed as Israel presses its assault in Gaza. Fresh air strikes in the southern city of Rafah hit homes later on Saturday, residents and Hamas officials said.
Israeli News 12 broadcast footage of Argamani reunited with her father, smiling and embracing him. Video of Argamani’s kidnapping, showing her shouting “Don’t kill me!” as she was driven into Gaza on a motorbike, had circulated soon after she was taken on October 7th.
A smiling Argamani was shown speaking by phone to Israeli president Yitzhak Herzog from hospital surrounded by family and friends, in footage released by the president’s office.
“Thank you for everything, thank you for this moment,” Argamani said.
“I am 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 that one was a dual Israeli-Polish citizen.
US president Joe Biden also welcomed the return of four Israeli hostages rescued in Gaza. “We won’t stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached,” Biden said at a news conference in Paris alongside French president Emmanuel Macron.
Following the hostage rescue, Israel’s centrist war cabinet minister Benny Gantz delayed a statement on Saturday in which he was widely expected to announce his resignation from Netanyahu’s emergency government. Gantz had presented the conservative premier a June 8th deadline to come up with a clear postwar strategy for Gaza.
A different picture unfolded back in Gaza. Palestinian ministry for health officials did not say how many of the fatalities were combatants after the Israeli military assault in Nuseirat had killed scores of people.
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“It was like a horror movie but this was a real massacre. Israeli drones and warplanes fired all night randomly at people’s houses and at people who tried to flee the area,” said Ziad, a 45-year-old paramedic and resident of Nuseirat, who gave only his first name.
The bombardment focused on a local marketplace and the al-Awda mosque, he told Reuters via a messaging app. “To free four people, Israel killed dozens of innocent civilians,” he said.
Emergency response teams sought to ferry the dead and wounded to hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah but many bodies were still lying in the streets, including around the market district, Ziad and other residents said.
Nuseirat, a historic Palestinian refugee camp, has been subjected to heavy Israeli bombing during the war and there has also been fierce ground fighting in its eastern areas.
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Late on Saturday, an Israeli air strike killed five Palestinians in the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics said.
The war has destabilised the wider Middle East, drawing in Hamas’s main backer Iran and its heavily armed Lebanese ally Hizbullah, which Israeli officials are threatening to go to war with on Israel’s northern border. – Reuters