How Israel’s Nuseirat raid freed 4 hostages and killed at least 274 Palestinians

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — They arrived in the midst of the day, when the squat concrete buildings of the Nuseirat refugee camp are stifling and the slim streets exterior are full of folks. No one suspected a factor till the pictures rang out.

The Israeli raid caught everybody off guard, from the Hamas militants guarding 4 hostages in two totally different buildings to the hundreds of civilians who quickly discovered themselves operating for his or her lives by means of a blistering crossfire.

By the time it was over, 4 Israeli hostages had been introduced residence alive and principally unscathed, at least bodily, and at least 274 Palestinians, and an Israeli commando, had been killed.

For Israel, it was essentially the most profitable operation of the eight-month conflict, bringing nationwide elation and eradicating a few of the stain from the military’s unprecedented collapse on Oct. 7. For Palestinians, it was a day of horror that despatched tons of of lifeless and wounded flooding into already beleaguered hospitals.

Here’s the way it unfolded, in keeping with the Israeli navy and Palestinian witnesses.

‘THE ULTIMATE SURPRISE’

Noa Argamani, a 26-year-old who had emerged as an icon of the hostage disaster, was being held in a single residence and three male hostages — Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, had been in one other about 200 meters (yards) away. All had been kidnapped from a desert rave-turned-massacre web site through the Oct. 7 assault that ignited the conflict.

They had been moved amongst totally different places however had been by no means held in Hamas’ infamous tunnels. At the time of their rescue they had been in locked rooms guarded by Hamas gunmen. Israeli intelligence found out the place they had been and commandos spent weeks practising the raid on life-size fashions of the buildings, in keeping with Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli navy spokesman.

“It needs to be like a surgical operation, like a brain operation,” he stated.

He stated they determined to strike at noon as a result of it will be the “ultimate suprise,” and to focus on the 2 buildings concurrently. Planners feared that in the event that they hit one first, the captors would hear the commotion and kill the hostages within the different.

Hagari declined to say how the Israeli forces made their approach to the guts of Nuseirat, a crowded, built-up refugee camp in central Gaza relationship again to the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. Based on earlier operations, at least a few of the particular forces who took half within the raid doubtless dressed like Palestinians and spoke fluent Arabic.

Kamal Benaji, a Palestinian displaced from Gaza City who was dwelling in a tent in central Nuseirat, stated he noticed a small truck with a automotive in entrance and one other behind pull up in entrance of a constructing on the road the place he had pitched his tent.

The commandos sprang from the truck and certainly one of them threw a grenade into the home. “Clashes and explosions broke out everywhere,” he stated.

A VEHICLE GETS STUCK AND A FIREFIGHT ERUPTS

The rescue of Argamani appears to have gone easily, whereas the crew extracting the three different hostages bumped into hassle.

Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, an officer in an elite police commando unit, was mortally wounded through the break-in, during which all of the Hamas guards had been killed, Amos Harel, a veteran protection correspondent, wrote in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Then the rescue car carrying the three hostages received caught within the camp, he stated.

Palestinian militants armed with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades opened fireplace on the rescuers, as Israel known as in heavy strikes from land and air to cowl their evacuation to the coast. “A lot of fire was around us,” Hagari stated.

It was this bombardment that seems to have killed and wounded so many Palestinians.

Mohamed al-Habash, one other displaced Palestinian, was within the Nuseirat market searching for humanitarian help or cheap meals when the heavy bombing started. He took cowl with a half-dozen different folks in a broken residence. He stated many different homes had been hit.

“We heard very loud bombing and heavy gunfire,” he stated. “We saw many fighter jets flying over the area.”

The Israeli rescuers ultimately made it to the coast. Zamora was evacuated by helicopter and later died of his wounds in a hospital. The navy renamed the operation in his honor.

Footage launched by the navy confirmed troopers strolling the hostages alongside the seaside towards the water and helicopters whipping up clouds of sand as they took off.

‘We known as the hostages diamonds, so we are saying we now have the diamonds in our palms,” Hagari stated.

THE AFTERMATH

At the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital within the close by city of Deir al-Balah, the lifeless and wounded arrived in waves — males, girls and youngsters. It’s one of many final functioning medical services within the space and was already filled with folks wounded in heavy strikes in latest days.

Samuel Johann, a coordinator with the worldwide charity Doctors Without Borders, which operates within the hospital, stated it was a “nightmare.”

“There have been back-to-back mass casualties as densely populated areas are bombed. It’s way beyond what anyone could deal with in a functional hospital, let alone with the scarce resources we have here,” he stated in a press release launched by the group.

The Gaza Health Ministry stated 274 Palestinians had been killed and round 700 had been wounded. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tallies, however stated the lifeless included 64 youngsters and 57 girls.

Khulood Shalaq, who was being handled at one other hospital along with her wounded 1-year-old nephew, stated 14 members of her household had been killed within the raid, with some nonetheless buried within the rubble. She stated at one level she noticed 4 helicopters launching missiles into the camp.

“The streets are filled with dead bodies,” she stated.

Hamas later launched a video claiming that three different hostages, together with an American, had been killed within the bombardment, but it surely offered no proof. The military stated it does “not respond to statements by terrorist organizations.”

Hamas and different militants are nonetheless holding some 120 hostages, round a 3rd of whom are believed to have died. Hagari acknowledged that a cease-fire deal would convey residence extra hostages than navy operations, however stated Israeli forces must “create conditions” to convey them residence.

“We are doing things that are unimaginable, and we will keep on doing things that are unimagined,” he stated.

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Jeffery reported from Jerusalem and Chehayeb from Beirut. Associated Press author Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed.

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