Hostages killed mistakenly in Gaza by Israeli forces were holding white flag, military says

Three Israeli hostages killed mistakenly in Gaza by Israeli forces had been holding up a white flag, a military official said on Saturday, citing an initial inquiry into the incident that has shaken the country.

A soldier saw the hostages emerging tens of metres from Israeli forces on Friday in Shejaiya, an area of intense combat in northern Gaza where Hamas militants operate in civilian attire and use deception tactics, the official said.

“They’re all without shirts and they have a stick with a white cloth on it. The soldier feels threatened and opens fire. He declares that they’re terrorists. [The Israeli forces] open fire. Two [hostages] are killed immediately,” the official told reporters in a phone briefing.

The third hostage was wounded and retreated into a nearby building where he called for help in Hebrew, the official said.

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“Immediately the battalion commander issues a ceasefire order, but again there’s another burst of fire towards the third figure and he also dies,” the official said. “This was against our rules of engagement,” he added.

The military on Friday identified the three hostages killed in Shejaiya, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, as Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and Samer Al-Talalka, abducted from nearby Kibbutz Nir Am.

Hamas militants rampaged through Israeli towns killing 1,200 people and capturing 240 hostages on October 7th. Israel then launched a counter-attack, during which Gaza health authorities say close to 19,000 people have been confirmed killed.

Around 300 people turned out to mourn Al-Talalka (25) at his funeral on Saturday in his hometown of Hura, in southern Israel.

“We had so many hopes, expectations, that he would come back to us,” his cousin, Alaa Al-Talalka told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan from his Bedouin community’s mourning tent.

“We’re not going to start pointing fingers, who is guilty and who is not. It is just not the time,” Al-Talalka said. “The families are thinking only of how to bring the hostages back alive. This is the time to ask for the war to end,” he said.

More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza, held incommunicado despite Israeli calls for Red Cross access.

More than 100, women, children, teens and foreigners were released in a deal struck in late November. Others have been declared dead by Israeli authorities.

The news on Friday that three had been killed by Israeli forces prompted a late-night protest outside Israel’s defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, where hostage families were expected to deliver a statement later on Saturday.

One father said each day left families guessing whether they will be next to receive bad news.

“We’re in a kind of Russian roulette,” Ruby Chen, whose son Itay is captive in Gaza, told reporters as he held up an hour glass. “Israel’s government needs to get a grip and bring back the hostages.”

Meanwhile, a senior Israeli envoy has met the prime minister of Qatar, a key mediator in the conflict in Gaza on Saturday, while sources from Egypt suggested Israel appeared to be more open to a new deal with Hamas.

Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu also appeared to hint on Saturday that new negotiations were under way to recover hostages held by Hamas, after his chief of Mossad intelligence met the prime minister of Qatar, a country mediating with Hamas.

In a news conference, Mr Netanyahu said Israel’s offensive in Gaza helped clinch 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.

While pledging to destroy Hamas, Israel has also sought to recover hostages held by the Iranian-backed Islamist group.

In late November, it entered a weeklong, Qatari- and Egyptian-brokered truce under which Hamas released more than 100 women, children and foreigners it was holding in exchange for 240 Palestinian women and teenagers freed from Israeli jails.

Representing Israel at those negotiations was its spy service Mossad. On Friday, Mossad director David Barnea met Qatar’s prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in a European capital, a source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Axios, which broke the news of the talks, said it was the first meeting between the two since the November truce. The source who spoke to Reuters said Mr Barnea returned to Israel early on Saturday to brief Mr Netanyahu.

Two Egyptian security sources said Israeli officials appeared more willing, in calls with mediators, to strike a fresh deal for a Gaza ceasefire and release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the recovery of hostages.

The Egyptian sources said Israeli officials appeared to have changed their mind on some points that they had previously refused, but did not go into further detail.

There was no immediate response from Mr Netanyahu’s government spokespeople to the Egyptian assessment or to Mr Barnea’s mission.

Families of the hostages held a rally on Saturday, demanding that Israel consider releasing senior Palestinian militants from jail in any new swap deal.

“The Israeli government needs to be active. They need to put an offer on the table, including prisoners with blood on their hands, and put the best offer on the table to get the hostages back alive,” said Ruby Chen, father of 19-year-old hostage Itay.

“We don’t want them back in bags.”

A Hamas official, when asked earlier if there was a drive to resume hostage negotiations, told Reuters there was nothing new to report. But in an apparent effort to sway Israeli public opinion, Hamas also released a video showing slain hostages and ending with the Hebrew warning: “Time is running out.”

[ EU leaders fail to back calls for humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza ]

Earlier on Saturday, Israeli forces bombarded targets across Gaza including a YMCA building, with dozens of Palestinians reported killed or wounded, despite a renewed US call to scale down the campaign and focus on Hamas leaders.

In Khan Younis in the south, Palestinian health officials said the Nasser Hospital had received 20 Palestinians killed in air strikes overnight, in addition to dozens of wounded, including women and children.

Palestinian health officials also said Israeli strikes on Gaza City in the north had hit the YMCA headquarters, which is sheltering hundreds of displaced people and reported several dead and wounded.

The official WAFA news agency said at least three dozen people had been killed in strikes on three houses in the Jabalia refugee camp, which health officials were unable to confirm. Gaza’s health ministry has said Israel’s ground offensive and the targeting of medical facilities have made it hard to gather information about casualties in northern Gaza.

Rescue workers believed some casualties remained buried under the rubble in some of those areas.

Gaza residents also reported intense overnight fighting and bombardment in Sheijaia, Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, Tuffah and Beit Hanoun in the north, and in the centre, east and north of Khan Younis.

“The Gaza Strip turned into a ball of fire overnight, we could hear explosions and gunshots echoing from all directions,” Ahmed (45) an electrician and father of six, told Reuters from a shelter in central Gaza.

[ Israel Defence Forces says it killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza after identification mistake ]

Internet and telephone lines in Gaza went down on Thursday evening and were still inaccessible on Saturday morning, according to internet access advocacy group netblocks.org, hampering aid deliveries and rescue efforts as Israel’s war against Gaza’s ruling militant group Hamas stretched into the 11th week.

US president Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, brought a message to Israel on Thursday and Friday to scale down the campaign and transition to more narrowly targeted operations against Hamas leaders, US officials said.

During the visit, Israeli officials publicly emphasised that they would continue the war until they eradicate Hamas. Washington appeared to acknowledge disagreement, as Mr Sullivan said the timing was under “intensive discussion” between the allies.

An Israeli military official said three hostages killed mistakenly in Gaza by Israeli forces had been holding up a white flag, according to an initial inquiry.

The incident happened in an area of intense combat where Hamas militants operate in civilian attire and use deception tactics, the official said, but the hostages were fired upon against Israel’s rules of engagement.

Israel, which said it recovered the bodies of three other hostages killed by Hamas, believes around 20 of more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza are dead.

The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had bombed a building in Jabalia from the air after its forces came under fire and Hamas militants were seen on the roof. It was unclear if the building was one of those that WAFA said had been hit.

The military also said it had killed militants holed up in two school buildings in Gaza City, and raided apartments in Khan Younis stocked with weapons, uncovering what it described as underground infrastructure used by Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza and that Israel has vowed to destroy.

“Every day the situation gets worse. Food gets less, water gets worse, only death, fear and destruction get greater,” said Samira (40) a mother of four, who is displaced in Rafah, near the southern border with Egypt.

“I can’t handle the children any more. They’re terrified and so am I. Every night we think it might be our last night. The bombing doesn’t stop,” she told Reuters by phone.

With intense fighting across the Gaza Strip and aid organisations warning of a humanitarian catastrophe, the United States has said Israel risks losing international support with “indiscriminate” air strikes.

Combat has intensified in the past two weeks since the collapse of a weeklong truce that had allowed dozens of hostages to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

In signs of the wider ramifications of the conflict, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis said they had attacked the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat with a swarm of drones, one of several drone incidents reported in the region on Saturday.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes over the past two months, many several times.

After Mr Sullivan left, Israel said it would open the Kerem Shalom crossing, the main road link into Gaza, for aid shipments for the first time in the war, allowing in 200 trucks per day.

The United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said it had taken 1.4 million people into its facilities, now so overcrowded that there were 486 people for every toilet in its shelters in Rafah.

Around 1,000 refugees have been wounded in those shelters since October 7th and at least 288 killed, along with 135 UNRWA workers, the agency said.

Tensions have also soared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces detained 16 Palestinians overnight, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Association, taking the number of arrests there since October 7th to 4,520. – Reuters/AP