274 Palestinians killed in Israeli raid that freed 4 hostages, Gaza Health Ministry says
Group's al-Qassam Brigades says some hostages were killed during rescue operation
Israeli forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas since October in a raid in the Gaza Strip on Saturday that Palestinian officials said killed more than 200 people.
The hostage rescue operation and an intense accompanying air assault took place in central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, a densely built-up and often embattled area in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian territory's ruling Islamist group.
An Israeli military spokesperson said the operation took place in the heart of a residential neighbourhood in Nuseirat, where Hamas had kept the hostages in two separate apartment blocks. Israel's forces came under intense fire during the assault and responded by firing "from the air and from the street," Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
In an update on Sunday, Gaza's health ministry said 274 Palestinians were killed — up from 210 it reported on Saturday —and 698 were injured.
An Israeli special forces commander was killed in exchanges of fire with militants emerging from cover in residential blocks, according to Israel's military. It said it knew of "under 100" Palestinians killed, but had not determined how many of them were fighters or civilians.
Israel named the rescued hostages as Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41. They were taken to hospital for medical checks and were in good health, the military said.
The four were kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the deadly raid by Hamas-led Palestinian militants on Israeli towns and villages near Gaza on Oct. 7, citing deteriorating conditions in Gaza under Israeli occupation. The attack precipitated the devastating war.
Hamas's raid killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and Israel's subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed at least 36,801 Palestinians, according to an updated tally by the territory's Health Ministry on Saturday.
Gunmen took about 250 hostages back to Gaza on Oct. 7, more than 100 of whom were released in exchange for about 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails during a week-long truce in November. There are 116 hostages left in the coastal enclave, according to Israel, including at least 40 who have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
The spokesperson for Hamas's armed al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubaida, said some hostages were killed during the rescue operation.
Attempts by the United States and regional countries to forge a deal that would release all remaining hostages in return for a ceasefire have repeatedly failed as Israel presses its assault in Gaza. Fresh airstrikes in the southern city of Rafah hit homes later on Saturday, residents and Hamas officials said.
'Welcome home'
Israeli News 12 broadcast footage of Argamani reunited with her father, smiling and embracing him. Video of Argamani's kidnapping, showing her shouting "Don't kill me!" as she was driven into Gaza on a motorbike, had circulated soon after she was taken on Oct. 7.
A smiling Argamani was shown speaking by phone to Israeli President Isaac Herzog from hospital surrounded by family and friends, in footage released by the president's office.
"Thank you for everything, thank you for this moment," she said.
"I am so excited to hear your voice, it brings tears to my eyes.... Welcome home," Herzog said.
Poland praised the rescue of the hostages and said that one was a dual Israeli-Polish citizen.
U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed the return of the four Israeli hostages. "We won't stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached," he told a news conference in Paris alongside French President Emmanuel Macron.
Bill Blair, Canada's minister of national defence, also welcomed news of the hostage rescue. He called on Hamas to release all remaining captives and to accept a ceasefire agreement outlined by Biden last Friday.
Following the hostage rescue, Benny Gantz, Israel's centrist war cabinet minister, delayed a statement on Saturday in which he was widely expected to announce his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's emergency government. Gantz had given the conservative leader a June 8 deadline to come up with a clear post-war strategy for Gaza.
'A real massacre'
A different picture unfolded back in Gaza, where Palestinian health officials and local medics said an Israeli military assault in Nuseirat had killed scores of people.
The ministry did not say how many of the fatalities were combatants.
The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said later that the death toll had risen to at least 210 Palestinians, with many more wounded, after medics and health officials gave earlier tolls of up to 100 dead. There was no immediate confirmation of the highest figure from Gaza's Health Ministry.
Social media footage that Reuters could not immediately verify showed bodies spilling entrails onto blood-stained streets.
"It was like a horror movie, but this was a real massacre. Israeli drones and warplanes fired all night randomly at people's houses and at people who tried to flee the area," said Ziad, 45, a paramedic and resident of Nuseirat, who gave only his first name.
The bombardment focused on a local marketplace and the al-Awda mosque, he told Reuters via a messaging app. "To free four people, Israel killed dozens of innocent civilians," he said.
Emergency response teams sought to ferry the dead and wounded to hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah but many bodies were still lying in the streets, including around the market district, Ziad and other residents said.
Nuseirat, a historic Palestinian refugee camp, has been subjected to heavy Israeli bombing during the war, and there has also been fierce ground fighting in its eastern areas.
Late on Saturday, an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, Palestinian medics said.
The war has destabilized the wider Middle East, drawing in Hamas's main backer, Iran, and its heavily armed Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, which Israeli officials are threatening to go to war with on Israel's northern border.
With files from CBC News