DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — At least 274 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli air and ground strike that rescued four hostages held by Hamas, Gaza’s health ministry said Sunday.
The ministry said around 700 people were injured in Saturday’s operation.
The complex attack deep in central Gaza was the largest rescue operation since October 7, when Hamas and other militants stormed the border, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage.
In response, Israel launched a large-scale offensive that killed more than 36,700 Palestinians, according to the ministry, which makes no distinction between civilians and fighters in its counts.
Israelis celebrated the return of Noa Argamani, 26; Almog Meir Jan, 22; Andrei Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 41, after Israeli forces attacked two locations simultaneously while under fire.
Argamani was one of the most widely recognized hostages after he, like the three others, was taken from a music festival. The video of her abduction showed her sitting between two men on a motorcycle, shouting, “Don’t kill me!”
Her mother, Liora, has brain cancer and had released a video pleading to see her daughter. Israel’s Channel 13 said Argamani was taken to hospital where her mother is being treated.
In Gaza, medics described scenes of horror and chaos as injured people poured into nearby hospitals, which were already struggling to treat the wounded after days of heavy Israeli attacks in the area.
“We had a range of war wounds, trauma wounds, from amputations to viscera and trauma, to TBIs (traumatic brain injuries), fractures and of course major burns,” said Karin Huster of Doctors Without Borders, an international charity working in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the facilities where deaths and injuries occurred.
“Children completely gray or white from the shock, burned, screaming for their parents. Many of them don’t scream because they are in shock.”
The Israeli army said it had attacked “threats to our forces in the area” and that a special forces officer had been killed during the rescue operation.
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Magdy reported from Cairo.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
