Israeli military mistakenly kills 3 Israeli hostages in Gaza
Israeli troops mistakenly shot three hostages to death Friday in a battle-torn neighborhood of Gaza City, and an Israeli strike killed a Palestinian journalist in the south of the besieged territory, underscoring the ferocity of Israel's ongoing onslaught.
The deaths were announced as a U.S. envoy tried to persuade the Israelis to scale back their campaign sooner rather than later.
The hostages were killed in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops have been engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas fighters in recent days. The soldiers mistakenly identified the three Israelis as a threat and opened fire on them, said the army's chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
He said it was believed that the three had either fled their captors or been abandoned.
“Perhaps in the last few days, or over the past day, we still don't know all the details, they reached this area,” Hagari said. He said the army expressed “deep sorrow” and was investigating.
Hamas and other fighters abducted more than 240 people in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and the hostages' plight has dominated public discourse ever since. Their families have led a powerful public campaign calling on the government to do more to bring them home.
Demonstrations in solidarity with the hostages and their families take place nearly every day. Late Friday, hundreds of protesters blocked Tel Aviv's main highway in a spontaneous demonstration calling for the the hostages' return.
Israeli political and military leaders often say freeing all the hostages is their top aim in the war alongside destroying Hamas.
Still, in seven weeks since ground troops pushed into northern Gaza, troops have not rescued any hostages, though they freed one early in the conflict and have found the bodies of several others. Hamas released over 100 in swaps for Palestinian prisoners last month, and more than 130 are believed to still be in captivity.
The three hostages were identified as young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities near the Gaza border — 28-year-old Yotam Haim, 25-year-old Samer Al-Talalka and 26-year-old Alon Shamriz.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called their deaths an “unbearable tragedy” and vowed to continue “with a supreme effort to return all the hostages
home safely.”
In southern Gaza, the Al Jazeera television network said an Israeli strike Friday in the city of Khan Younis killed cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa and wounded its chief correspondent in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh. The two were reporting at a school that had been hit by an earlier airstrike when a drone launched a second strike, the network said.
Khan Younis has been
the main target of Israel's ground offensive in the south.
Speaking from a hospital bed, Dahdouh told the network that he managed to walk to an ambulance. But Abu Daqqa lay bleeding in the school and died hours later. An ambulance tried to reach the school to evacuate him but had to turn back because roads were blocked by the rubble of destroyed houses, it said.
Dahdouh, a veteran of covering Israel-Gaza wars whose wife and children were killed by an Israeli strike earlier in the war, was wounded by shrapnel in his right arm.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abu Daqqa is the 64th journalist to be killed since the conflict erupted between Hamas and Israel. That number includes 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists.
Israel's offensive has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 80% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south in a spiraling humanitarian crisis.
The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its latest count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around twothirds of the dead in previous tallies.