By Maayan Lubell and Nidal al-Mughrabi
JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) – The Israeli army said it rescued four hostages held since October during a raid in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday, while Palestinian officials said an Israeli attack in the same area killed more than 50 people.
It was not immediately clear whether the hostage rescue and the deadly Israeli attack were part of the same operation, but both took place in al-Nuseirat, an oft-contested area in the eight-month war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas.
The Israeli army named the rescued hostages as Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40. They were taken to hospital for medical checks and were in good health, the army said.
They were all kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s deadly attack on Israeli towns and villages near Gaza on October 7, an attack that launched the devastating war in the besieged Hamas-run enclave.
The Hamas incursion killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza killed at least 36,801 Palestinians, according to an updated Health Ministry count. the enclave on Saturday.
Palestinian militants took about 250 hostages into Gaza on October 7. There are now 116 left in Gaza, according to Israeli figures, including at least 40 declared dead by Israeli authorities.
Israeli News 12 broadcast images of Argamani being reunited with her father, smiling and hugging him. A video of Argamani’s kidnapping circulated shortly after she was dragged into Gaza by armed men on October 7.
The Israeli military had said earlier on Saturday that it was targeting militant infrastructure in al-Nuseirat, an unusual announcement as it does not normally report on its operations while they are ongoing.
Al-Nuseirat, a historic Palestinian refugee camp, has been subject to heavy Israeli bombing during the war and there has also been heavy ground fighting in the eastern areas.
Gaza’s Health Ministry, meanwhile, said on Saturday that Israeli military strikes in al-Nuseirat had killed and injured dozens of people, including women and children. The ministry would not say how many of the fatalities were fighters.
A health ministry official put the death toll at more than 50 and said emergency teams were trying to take the dead and injured to hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, but many bodies were still lying on the streets, including around a market. neighbourhood.
Locals said al-Nuseirat faced heavy Israeli drone and air strikes, and women and children were among the dead.
Israeli military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said the rescue operation was carried out under fire in the heart of a residential area, where he said Hamas had hidden prisoners among Gaza civilians under the armed guard of militants.
During a televised news conference, Hagari said an Israeli soldier had been seriously injured. Israeli forces returned fire, Hagari said, including with airstrikes.
The Gaza war shows no signs of slowing down, even as Israel’s main ally, the United States, pushes for a ceasefire and an agreement that would free the remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for the release of Palestinians being imprisoned in Israel.
The war has destabilized the broader Middle East, drawing Hamas’ main backer Iran and its heavily armed Lebanese ally Hezbollah, with which Israeli officials are threatening to go to war on Israel’s northern border.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Nayera Abdallah in Dubai; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Mark Heinrich)
