Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a TV news conference Saturday that the accidental killings of the three Israeli hostages by Israeli troops Friday “broke my heart, broke the entire nation’s heart.”
Netanyahu called the war between Israel and Hamas an existential war that must be fought until victory, despite pressure and costs, adding Gaza would be demilitarized and under Israeli security control.
“We are as committed as ever to continue until the end, until we dismantle Hamas, until we return all our hostages,” he said.
Netanyahu said the offensive in Gaza had helped secure a partial hostage-release deal in November. “The instruction I am giving the negotiating team is predicated on this pressure, without which we have nothing,” he said.
Hamas: No more hostages released until war ends
A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, said there will be no further hostage releases until the war ends and Israel accepts the militant group’s conditions for an exchange. Netanyahu said Israel would never agree to such demands.
Several hundred families, friends and supporters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza rallied Saturday in Tel Aviv at the “Hostages Plaza,” calling on the Israeli government to negotiate the remaining hostages’ release.
Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops erroneously identified the hostages as a threat and fired on them Friday as they were coming out of a building waving a white flag to show that they were posing no threat.
He said it was not clear whether the hostages had escaped their captors or had been abandoned. Their deaths occurred in Gaza’s Sheijaia district, the scene of bloody battles between Israel’s military and Hamas militants. Hagari said the army expressed “deep sorrow” and is investigating.
After the first two hostages were shot, the third young man ran back into the building screaming for help in Hebrew. The commander issued an order to cease fire, but another burst of gunfire killed the third man, an Israeli military official said.
According to a preliminary investigation, the soldiers who followed the third hostage into the building believed he was a Hamas member trying to pull them into a trap, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
The soldiers’ behavior was “against our rules of engagement,” the military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to brief reporters in line with military regulations, told reporters. He noted the incident was being investigated at the highest level.
The account of how the hostages died raises questions about the conduct of Israeli ground troops. Palestinians on several occasions have reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire as civilians tried to flee to safety.
Hamas has claimed other hostages were previously killed by Israeli gunfire or airstrikes, without presenting evidence.
Fighting continues
Intense fighting continued Saturday in Gaza between Israeli forces and Hamas, a U.S.- and EU-designated terror group, despite urgings from U.S. officials for Israel to use more precise targeting of Hamas leaders in Gaza, rather than widespread bombing and ground operations.
Residents in northern Gaza reported heavy bombing and the sounds of gunbattles overnight and into Saturday in devastated Gaza City and the nearby urban refugee camp of Jabaliya.
Airstrikes and tank shelling overnight also were reported in the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah. Palestinian media said Saturday that dozens of Palestinians were killed in the airstrikes.
The Israeli army said Saturday it had raided two schools in Gaza City, saying they were a hiding place for Hamas. On Friday, the military said its troops had destroyed a Hamas command-and-control hub in Sheijaia and conducted a “targeted raid” on militant infrastructure in Khan Younis.
The Middle East has been a tinderbox since Iranian-backed Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,200 people while taking about 240 hostages, according to Israel. Israel’s response, with both airstrikes and a ground offensive, has killed more than 18,000 Palestinians, a large percentage of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Source : VOA