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Hostages killed by Israel had a white flag
AGENCIES
The Israeli army said yesterday that three hostages mistakenly killed by soldiers carried a white flag and cried for help in Hebrew.
Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer El-Talalqa -- all in their 20s -- were shot during operations in Gaza City on Friday, sparking protests in Israel.
They were among about 250 people taken hostage during Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel, which killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures, reports AFP.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said that during fighting in the Shejaiya district of Gaza City, troops “mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat and as a result, fired toward them and the hostages were killed”.
An army official said the hostages were all “without shirts” and had “a stick with a white cloth on it”, but a soldier felt threatened and opened fire.
“Two are killed immediately, one is injured and runs back into the building,” the official said, adding that the soldiers heard “a cry for help... in Hebrew”.
Despite a ceasefire order, “there’s another burst of fire towards the third figure and he also dies.”
The official called it a “tragic” event and “very hard day”, but said the troops had faced “intense combat in the area”.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described their deaths as an “unbearable tragedy”.
In November, a one-week truce saw more than 100 hostages freed in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, but fighting has since resumed.
The hostages’ deaths have heightened already fierce scrutiny of how Israel is conducting its ground and air assault in Gaza.
News platform Axios said the director of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, David Barnea, was due to meet this weekend in an unspecified location in Europe with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who helped negotiate the earlier truce.
Meanwhile in Gaza, fierce fighting continued.
Israeli forces bombarded targets across Gaza including a YMCA building, with dozens of Palestinians reported killed or wounded.
In Khan Younis in the south, Palestinian health officials said the Nasser Hospital had received 20 Palestinians killed in air strikes overnight, in addition to dozens of wounded, including women and children.
Palestinian health officials also said Israeli strikes on Gaza City in the north had hit the YMCA headquarters, which is sheltering hundreds of displaced people and reported several dead and wounded.
The official WAFA news agency said at least three dozen people had been killed in strikes on three houses in the Jabalia refugee camp, which health officials were unable to confirm. Gaza’s health ministry has said Israel’s ground offensive and the targeting of medical facilities have made it hard to gather information about casualties in northern Gaza, reports Reuters.
Rescue workers believed some casualties remained buried under the rubble in some of those areas.
Gaza residents also reported intense overnight fighting and bombardment in Sheijaia, Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, Tuffah and Beit Hanoun in the north, and in the centre, east and north of Khan Younis.
A funeral was held in Gaza for Samer Abu Daqqa, a journalist with TV network Al Jazeera killed the previous day by an Israeli strike in Khan Yunis that also wounded his colleague, Wael al-Dahdouh.
“He died hungry, they died with nothing to eat, with hunger. Oh my darling,” said his grieving mother, Umm Maher.
More than 60 journalists and media staff have died since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.