The Israeli army was on Saturday investigating the killing
of three hostages which it said had been mistakenly identified as a threat by
soldiers, an incident that sparked protests in Tel Aviv.
The military said Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer
El-Talalqa — all in their 20s — were shot during operations in Gaza City.
They were among about 250 people taken hostage during
Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel, which killed around 1,140 people, mostly
civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages, Israel
launched a massive military offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement
that has left much of the Gaza Strip in ruins. The Hamas-run territory’s health
ministry says the war has killed at least 18,800 people, mostly women and
children.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said that during fighting in
the Shejaiya district of Gaza City, troops “mistakenly identified three Israeli
hostages as a threat and as a result, fired toward them and the hostages were
killed”.
The military said later it had started “reviewing the
incident” and that “immediate lessons from the event have been learned” and
passed on to all troops on the ground.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described their deaths as
an “unbearable tragedy”.
Hundreds of people later gathered outside the Defence
Ministry in Tel Aviv to call on Netanyahu’s government to secure the release of
129 hostages still held in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
“I am dying of fear,” said Merav Svirsky, sister of
Hamas-held hostage Itay Svirsky. “We demand a deal now.”
In November, a one-week truce saw more than 100 hostages
freed in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, but fighting has
since resumed.
The hostages’ deaths have heightened already fierce scrutiny
of how Israel is conducting its ground and air assault in Gaza.
The White House, which provides billions of dollars in
military aid to Israel, has voiced growing concern over mounting civilian
deaths.
“I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives —
not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful,” said US President Joe Biden
this week.
News platform Axios said the director of Israeli
intelligence agency Mossad, David Barnea, was due to meet this weekend in an
unspecified location in Europe with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin
Abdulrahman Al Thani.
Axios said the officials would discuss resuming negotiations
for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages.
In Gaza, fierce fighting continued.
The Israeli army said Saturday it had raided two schools in
Gaza City saying they were Hamas hiding place.
TV network Al Jazeera said Friday that one of its
journalists, Samer Abudaqa, had been killed and another, Wael Dahdouh, wounded
by “shrapnel from an Israeli missile attack” in Khan Yunis.
“He died hungry, they died with nothing to eat, with hunger.
Oh my darling,” said his grieving mother, Umm Maher.
More than 60 journalists and media staff have died since the
war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“We were reporting, we were filming, we had finished and we
were with the civil defence, but when we were on the way back, they hit us with
a missile,” said Dahdouh, who lost his wife, two children and grandchild
earlier in the war.
In the face of growing international pressure, Israel
announced a “temporary measure” allowing aid to be delivered directly to Gaza
through the Kerem Shalom border crossing.
Since the war began, a trickle of aid has squeezed into Gaza
through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Aid agencies have said the volume is nothing like enough to
help the estimated 1.9 million Gazans displaced by the war.
A World Health Organization representative said it was “very
good news”.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met Palestinian
President Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah on Friday.
Abbas said Gaza must remain an “integral part” of a future
Palestinian state.
But Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA), which has partial
administrative control in the West Bank only, is deeply unpopular with
Palestinians and has been further weakened by the war.
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