The Israeli army bombarded the Gaza Strip on Sunday, the day after a “difficult” operation which allowed the release of four Israeli hostages in the Nusseirat refugee camp, where the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas reported 274 people killed .
Four members of the same family were killed and several others injured in an airstrike that hit their home in Al-Darraj, a neighborhood in Gaza City in the north of the besieged Palestinian territory, according to medics at the Al-Ahli hospital.
In the central Gaza Strip, witnesses reported helicopter shelling east of Al-Bureij camp and artillery shelling in Deir al-Balah. Heavy weapons fire was also reported in Rafah, in the south.
This operation constituted proof that Israel was not giving in “in the face of terrorism”, he welcomed, while negotiations for a truce in Gaza associated with the release of hostages were already deadlocked. .
The freed hostages – Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41 – were all four “abducted” from the site of the Nova electro music festival during the he unprecedented attack carried out on Israeli soil by Hamas on October 7, which sparked hostilities.
The hostages, who were in good health, were rescued by Israeli forces during “a difficult special daytime operation in Nusseirat”, in the central Gaza Strip, according to the army. Israeli police announced the death of one of their officers.
The Hamas Ministry of Health, for its part, announced on Sunday a new toll of at least 274 people killed in the operation in Nousseirat on Saturday.
“By committing horrible massacres, the enemy was able to free some of its prisoners, but at the same time it killed some during the operation,” said Abou Obeida, spokesperson for the branch. Hamas army. The AFP was not able to independently verify this information.
Saying she was “relieved” at the release of the hostages, the UN special rapporteur in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese lamented that it was “at the cost of at least 200 Palestinians, including children, killed and more than 400 injured “. “This horror must stop,” insisted UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Welcoming “many” “messages of support,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz regretted that “only the enemies of Israel have complained about the victims [among] Hamas terrorists and their accomplices.” “We will continue to act with determination and force,” he added in a statement.
In Nousseirat, Khalil Al-Tahrawi said he heard shootings and shells from his shelter. “Israeli planes started bombing us… to cover up the withdrawal operation,” he said.
We see men making their way through the debris to try to put out flames or help the injured. Others were gathered around bodies wrapped in blankets.
“We were sitting peacefully and suddenly we heard the knocking. There were 50 of us hiding and we saw missiles flying above our heads,” laments another resident of Nousseirat, who preferred not to give her name.
“Here we are, displaced for the third time, without knowing where to go. »
In Israel, it was a time for relief and celebration, with the Hostage Families Forum hailing a “miraculous triumph”.
“At home,” headlined two main Israeli dailies, Yediot Aharonot and Israel Hayom, on the front pages of Sunday, with a photo showing the moving reunion between Noa Argamani and her father.
Financial newspaper Calcalist hailed a “heroic operation” that gave the Israelis “a few hours of grace.”
The attack carried out on October 7 by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Palestinian territory resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data.
In this attack, 251 people were taken as hostages. After a short truce in November which allowed the release of around a hundred of them, 116 hostages are still being held in the Gaza Strip, of whom 41 are dead, according to the Israeli army.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union.
His army launched a deadly offensive in the small coastal territory. At least 37,084 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed there since October 7, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.
The American army announced on Saturday that it had delivered, from the temporary artificial port repaired after a storm, nearly 500 tonnes of “indispensable” humanitarian aid to the 2.4 million inhabitants facing the risk of famine.
