The Israeli army announced on Saturday that it had freed four hostages during a “special operation” in the center of the Gaza Strip, an area targeted by intense bombardments for several days.
In the ninth month of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under strong pressure abroad for his conduct of the war in Gaza, but also internally with that of the families of the kidnapped hostages during the unprecedented attack carried out on Israeli soil by Hamas on October 7, which sparked hostilities.
Saturday morning, during “a difficult special daytime operation in Nousseirat, four Israeli hostages were freed,” the Israeli army wrote in a statement.
They are Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, all four “abducted” from the site of the Nova electro music festival, according to the army.
The hostages, according to the same source, were “rescued” in two different locations in Nousseirat and are “in good health”. They were transferred to the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv, “to carry out further medical examinations”.
“Miraculous”
“Noa, Almog, Andrey and Shlomi, we are very happy to welcome you home”, welcomed Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defense, on X, describing the operation which allowed their release as “ heroic”.
The Hostage Families Forum hailed a “miraculous triumph”, urging the government and the international community to secure the release of the other hostages.
Israeli strikes have focused in recent days on the center of the Gaza Strip and in particular on Nusseirat where one of them on a school of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), left 37 dead on Thursday according to a local hospital.
Accusing Hamas of having purposely used this school to launch attacks, the Israeli army said it had killed “17 terrorists” during this strike. Hamas, which declared that 14 children had died, denounced “false information”.
The head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, accused Israel of having struck “without prior warning” this school in Nousseirat which sheltered, according to him, “6,000 people displaced” by the fighting.
Before its announcement on the hostages, the Israeli army said on Saturday that it was targeting “terrorist infrastructure” in the Nusseirat sector, while witnesses reported shots from drones and helicopters against the camp.
A spokesperson for Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, near Nousseirat, Doctor Khalil al-Dakran, announced the death of 15 people in “intense Israeli strikes”, which, according to him, caused dozens of others injured.
Intense fighting between the army and Palestinian fighters is taking place in the Al-Bureij and neighboring al-Maghazi camps, according to witnesses.
In a statement, the Israeli army said it had struck “dozens of terrorist cells and infrastructure, including a tunnel located in a civilian structure” during operations in Bureij and Deir al-Balah.
In the north, five people were killed and seven injured in a nighttime aerial bombardment on a house in the Sheikh Radwane neighborhood of Gaza City, a doctor at the Baptist Hospital and Gaza Civil Defense said.
“Huge explosion”
“We heard the sound of a huge explosion […] We went there and discovered human remains of children, women and elderly people,” Mohammad Abou Nahl, a resident of Gaza, told AFP.
In the south, artillery bombardments hit several areas of the town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, according to local sources. The army said it was continuing “targeted operations” there and had discovered “large quantities of weapons”.
The attack carried out on October 7 by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Palestinian territory resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data.
During this attack, 251 people were taken as hostages. After a short truce in November which allowed the release of around a hundred of them, 116 hostages are still being held in Gaza, of whom 41 are dead, according to the Israeli army.
In response to the October 7 attack, the Israeli army launched a deadly offensive in the small coastal territory where Hamas took power in 2007. At least 36,801 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed, according to reports. data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.
Blinken’s next visit
The conflict has devastated a large part of the Gaza Strip and uprooted most of its 2.4 million inhabitants who face the risk of famine. International aid, whose entry into Gaza is controlled by Israel, only reaches the territory in dribs and drabs.
In Israel, Benny Gantz, the former army chief who became Benjamin Netanyahu’s political rival, who was to announce his resignation on Saturday evening, canceled his intervention, according to Israeli media, shortly before the declaration on the release of the hostages.
On May 18, he issued an ultimatum to Mr. Netanyahu, demanding the adoption, by June 8, of an “action plan” on the post-war in the Gaza Strip, failing which he would be “forced to resign from the government”, which he had joined after October 7.
While diplomatic efforts to achieve a truce stall, American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected next week in Israel, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan, to “promote a ceasefire proposal” presented recently by President Joe Biden, according to Washington.
According to Wall Street Journalciting sources familiar with the matter, Qatar and Egypt recently threatened Hamas officials with arrest and expulsion from Doha where they are based if they did not agree to a truce with Israel.