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UPDATE
Almog Meir Jan, a released hostage reacts, after the military said that Israeli forces have rescued four hostages alive from the central Gaza Strip on June 8, 2024. (Reuters)Next
REUTERS
June 08, 2024
- Israeli special forces commander killed during operation, police statement said
- Not immediately clear if hostage rescue and deadly Israeli assault part of the same operation
JERUSALEM/CAIRO: Israeli forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas since October in a raid in Gaza on Saturday while over 200 Palestinians were killed in airstrikes in the same area, according to Hamas officials, in one of the bloodiest Israeli assaults of the war.
It was not immediately clear if the hostage rescue and the Israeli air assault were part of the same operation but both took place in central Gaza’s Al-Nuseirat, a densely built-up and often embattled area in the eight-month-old war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian territory’s ruling Islamist group.
An Israeli military spokesperson said the hostage rescue operation unfolded under fire in the heart of a residential neighborhood, where he said Hamas had been hiding captives among Gaza civilians under guard by armed militants.
Israeli forces returned fire, including with airstrikes, added the spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. An Israeli special forces commander was killed during the operation, a police statement said.
Israel named the rescued hostages as Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41. 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 Oct. 7, which precipitated the devastating war in the Hamas-run enclave.
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 health ministry on Saturday.
CALL TO PRESIDENT
Gunmen took around 250 hostages back to Gaza on Oct. 7. There are 116 now left in the coastal enclave, according to Israeli tallies, including at least 40 whom Israeli authorities have declared dead in absentia.
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, circulated soon after she was taken on Oct. 7.
A smiling Argamani was shown speaking by phone to Israeli President Isaac 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,” she 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 is a dual Israeli-Polish citizen.
BLOODY SCENES
A different picture unfolded back in Gaza, where Palestinian health ministry officials and local medics said that an Israeli military assault in Nuseirat had killed scores of people including women and children.
The ministry did not say how many of the fatalities were combatants.
The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said later the death toll had risen to at least 210 Palestinians with many more wounded, after medics and health officials gave earlier tolls of up to 100 dead. There was no immediate confirmation of the highest figure from Gaza’s health ministry.
Social media footage that Reuters could not immediately verify showed bodies spilling entrails onto bloodstained streets.
“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, 45, a 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.
The Gaza war shows no signs of slowing even as Israel’s chief ally the United States presses for a ceasefire and a deal that would free the remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for releases of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
The war has destabilized the wider Middle East, drawing in Hamas’s main backer Iran and its heavily armed Lebanese ally Hezbollah, which Israeli officials are threatening to go to war with on Israel’s northern border.
source https://www.arabnews.com/node/2526211/middle-east
Israeli hostage Noa Argamani freed in time to see her terminally ill mother
This undated photo provided by the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters shows Noa Argamani, one of those taken hostage by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 surprise attack in southern Israel. (AP)
Updated 43 sec ago
REUTERS
- Argamani, 26, was one of the most recognized faces among the hostages abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7
- Argamani was rescued on Saturday, along with three other hostages, in an operation by Israeli special forces from an apartment building in central Gaza
TEL AVIV: Hours after being rescued from eight months captivity in Gaza, freed hostage Noa Argamani arrived at a hospital in Tel Aviv to see her terminally ill mother.
Argamani, 26, was one of the most recognized faces among the hostages abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7. Harrowing footage of her being taken into Gaza on the back of a motorcycle, pleading for her life and reaching desperately toward her boyfriend being marched alongside her on foot circulated across the globe.
Argamani’s boyfriend Avinatan Or is still in captivity.
Argamani was rescued on Saturday, along with three other hostages, in an operation by Israeli special forces from an apartment building in central Gaza.
“I’m so happy to be here,” she said in a phone call with Israel’s president upon her return, smiling and surrounded by friends and family.
She was later met with cheers upon arrival at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center where her mother, Liora, was being treated for terminal brain cancer.
Back in October, shortly after her daughter was abducted from a music festival turned killing field in southern Israel, Liora, sitting in a wheelchair, was asked in an interview with a local television station how she imagined their reunion.
“At least to be able to hug her,” Liora answered.
Hospital CEO Ronni Gamzu said the mother’s condition was “complicated and tough.” He said Argamani was able to communicate with her mother, who they believe understood that her daughter had come home.
“For the last eight months we are trying to keep her in a status that she can communicate,” Gamzu said.
Argamani’s father, Yaakov, first met her after a military helicopter carried her back to Israel.
“Today is my birthday, and a gift like this I never believed I would get,” he said.
More than 360 people were killed during the rampage at the Nova dance festival, and another 40 were taken hostage by Hamas, according to Israeli tallies.
Nearby the hospital in central Tel Aviv, at what has become known as hostage square, thousands of Israelis rallied to commemorate the rescue of the four hostages and to demand the release of more than 115 that remain in Gaza.
source https://www.arabnews.com/node/2526606/middle-east
Israeli military forces have carried out yet another massacre at a refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 210 Palestinians before they retrieve four Israeli captives.
Israeli forces carried out dozens of airstrikes in the besieged territory on Saturday, particularly in and around the Deir el-Balah and Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
The regime’s forces directly targeted civilians, including children, during “a barbaric and brutal aggression” against Nuseirat camp, Gaza government media office said.
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Categories: America, Arab World, Asia, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, USA, War, War crimes
What is very interesting to see is that the Israeli hostages set free are in much better health and shape than any ‘prisoners’ (hostages) held by the Israelis.