The Israeli army said on Saturday that the three hostages killed by its soldiers “by mistake” in Gaza. waved a white flag and spoke in Hebrew, in a sector where the troops were being ambushed, according to the first elements of the investigation.
The victims, Yotam Haïm, 28 years old, Samer al-Talalqa, 25 years old and Alon Lulu Shamriz, 26 years old, appeared “a few tens of meters from one of our positions”, in the Choujaiya district, in the city of Gaza, a military official told reporters.
“One of the soldiers saw them when they appeared. They don’t wear t-shirts and they have a stick with a white cloth on it. The soldier felt threatened and shoots, he declares that they are terrorists. Two (hostages) are killed,” added this source.
“Immediately, another was injured and rushed into the building,” added this source, specifying that the soldiers then “heard a call for help in Hebrew”.
“The battalion commander orders the shooting to stop, but again bursts are fired in the direction of the third person and he dies,” continued the military official, adding that the incident went “against our rules of conduct.” ‘commitment “.
Shortly after the announcement of the deaths of the three hostages on Friday evening, families and supporters demonstrated to demand an immediate agreement for the release of the hostages, in Tel Aviv, where they also planned to meet on Saturday .
The army reported a “tragic event” which occurred in an area of the Gaza Strip where soldiers are facing “great pressure”, “intense fighting” and “numerous ambushes”.
According to the official, a building with “SOS” written on it is “a few hundred meters” from the scene of the incident and the army is investigating to find out “if there is a link with the hostages” .
Some 250 people were taken hostage during the unprecedented attack launched on October 7 by Hamas on Israeli soil, which left around 1,140 dead, mostly civilians, according to the authorities. To date, 129 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
In retaliation, Israel promised to “destroy” Hamas in power in Gaza and its strikes left 18,800 dead, according to the authorities of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Second truce?
“Every day a hostage dies,” read one poster, while an Israeli flag placed in the street was sprayed with red paint suggesting blood.
“The only way to free the living hostages is through negotiation,” said Motti Direktor, a 66-year-old protester on the spot. “We’re here after a heartbreaking evening, and I’m scared to death. We demand an agreement now,” said Merav Svirsky, whose brother Itay is hostage in Gaza.
Hostage families and supporters plan to meet again on the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, upon the army’s announcement, regretted “an unbearable tragedy” which plunged “the entire State of Israel into mourning”, while in Washington the White House spoke of a “tragic mistake”.
In the meantime, “immediate lessons were learned from this event, which were transmitted to all troops on the ground,” the army said in a statement released Friday evening, explaining that it had launched an investigation.
A one-week truce, which ended on the 1er December, allowed a pause in the fighting as well as the release of around a hundred hostages held by Hamas and 240 Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israel, as well as the delivery of emergency humanitarian aid.
After the announcement of the death of the three hostages, the Axios site indicated that David Barnea, the head of Mossad, the Israeli foreign secret service, is to meet the Qatari Prime Minister, Mohammed ben Abdelrahmane Al-Thani, over the weekend.
The meeting is planned in Europe and must concern a second phase of truce, in order to allow the release of hostages, continues Axios without specifying the location of this meeting or the number of hostages who could thus be freed.
“Temporary” entry of aid
After more than two months of war and a total siege imposed by Israel since October 9, living conditions in the Gaza Strip are described as nightmarish by the UN and NGOs for Palestinian civilians forced into ever-smaller areas. .
Some 1.9 million residents, or 85% of its population, were displaced, according to the UN, many of whom had to flee several times in the face of widespread bombing and fighting.
Early Saturday, Hamas reported “fierce fighting” in the Jabaliya sector (north), air strikes and intense artillery fire in Khan Younes, the new epicenter of the fighting in the south of the territory.
In the occupied West Bank, where violence intensified after the outbreak of the war in Gaza, eight Palestinians were arrested in Nablus where the Israeli army launched an operation, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Warning sirens sounded in Zar’it, in northern Israel, where “an unspecified flying machine” coming “from Lebanon” was intercepted by the army, she said.
Faced with international pressure, notably from its American ally, Israel authorized on Friday the “temporary” opening of a new entry point for humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom crossing.
This decision aims to decongest Rafah, the only entry point for food and medicine, while Israel tightens inspection of trucks transporting aid. It is currently the only entry point for trucks carrying food and medicine into the narrow strip of land, and at a rate much lower than before the war.
Journalist killed
Journalists in Gaza also continue to pay a very heavy price: an Al Jazeera journalist was killed on Friday. Al Jazeera bureau chief in Gaza, Waël Dahdouh, who lost his wife and two of his children at the start of the war, was injured in the arm by shrapnel and transferred to a hospital in Khan Younes .
“Yesterday he came to say goodbye to us […] He didn’t eat anything. He died on an empty stomach,” the mother of Samer Abou Daqa, the Al Jazeera journalist who was buried in Khan Younes, told AFPTV on Saturday, her voice breaking with emotion.
Wrapped in a shroud, his remains were accompanied by a “Press” bulletproof vest and a protective helmet.
More than 60 journalists and media workers have died since the start of the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
A journalist from the Turkish Anadolu news agency was also injured in east Jerusalem, annexed and occupied by Israel. In images recovered by AFP, we see this photographer, Mustafa Alkharuf, first hit in the face then kicked.
An Israeli police spokesperson said the officers seen in the video had been placed on “immediate operational suspension.”
While in Israel on Thursday and Friday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan asked Israeli officials to move to a “lower intensity” phase in the short term.
In an unprecedented sign of tension in the face of the scale of Palestinian losses, American President Joe Biden had also denounced “indiscriminate” bombings, warning his Israeli ally that he risked losing his international support.
To try to avoid a regional conflagration at a time of growing tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border and in the Red Sea, the head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna will visit Israel and the West Bank on Sunday, before joining Lebanon.
She was initially expected there on Saturday but had to postpone her visit following a technical problem on the plane which transported her to Beirut.