Israelis on Saturday celebrated the release of four hostages from Gaza in a military operation that Gaza’s health ministry said health official said left least 274 Palestinians dead and hundreds more wounded.
The Israeli military named the rescued hostages as Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, all of whom were abducted from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7 last year.
Video footage widely shared on social media showed beachgoers in Israel’s coastal commercial hub of Tel Aviv erupting into cheers after a lifeguard announced the release of the four hostages over a loudspeaker.
Photo: Israeli army / handout via Reuters
Hilla Israeli, a 39-year-old teacher, said she was relaxing by the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel when she heard the news.
“In an instant everyone started pulling their phones, people came out of the water, shouts of joy came from different directions,” she said. “I cried so much from excitement — I couldn’t stop the tears.”
It was “a very emotional day,” 42-year-old Uriya Bekenstein said. “We have had these hostages in our thoughts for every day for the better part of a year now — to have even a few of them rescued against all odds, it means the world.”
Photo: Bloomberg
Dozens of hostages were released during a one-week truce in November, and before Saturday only three other captives were freed in Israeli military raids.
There are now 116 hostages still held in the Palestinian territory, including 41 the army says are dead.
Thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv to demand government action to end the war and bring the remaining hostages home.
Photo: AFP
“It should be remembered that only a deal will lead to the release of the vast majority of the hostages,” said Omri Shtivi, the brother of hostage Idan Shtivi, who on Saturday turned 29 in captivity.
The rescue operation was Israel’s largest since the latest war with Hamas began, taking the four to safety out of central Gaza in a heavy air and ground assault.
Israeli aircraft hummed overhead as the bodies of 109 Palestinians including 23 children and 11 women were taken to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where spokesperson Khalil Degran said that more than 100 wounded also arrived.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 274 people were killed in what it labelled the “Nuseirat massacre,” updating an earlier toll of 210 from the government media office which said the fatalities included women and children.
The figures could not be independently verified.
The ministry said 698 people were wounded.
In Nuseirat, where the hostages were being held, Palestinians described coming under intense bombardment and heavy gunfire.
Reporters saw dozens of bodies brought to al-Aqsa hospital from the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah areas, as smoke rose in the distance and armored vehicles rolled by.
“My two cousins were killed, and two other cousins were seriously injured. They did not commit any sin. They were sitting at home,” one person said at the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Israel’s military said it had attacked “threats to our forces in the area,” and one commando had died.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters that intelligence determined some time ago that the hostages were being held in two apartments, about 200m from each other, in the heart of the Nuseirat camp.
The forces had trained repeatedly on a model of the apartment buildings, he said.
The forces moved in simultaneously in broad daylight, believing this ensured the best element of surprise, Hagari said,
However, he said the rescuers came under heavy fire as they moved out, including from gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades from within the neighborhood.
“A lot of fire was around us,” he said, adding that the military responded with heavy force, including from aircraft, to extract the rescuers and hostages.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant