Three hostages killed mistakenly in Gaza by Israeli forces were holding up a white flag, according to an initial inquiry into the incident, a military official said as per news agency Reuters. The incident happened in an area of intense combat where Hamas operated in civilian attire and use deception tactics, he said. A soldier saw the hostages emerging tens of meters from Israeli forces in the area of Shejaiya, he added.
“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, they (forces) open fire, two are killed immediately,” the military official said. The third hostage was wounded and retreated into a nearby building where he called for help in Hebrew after which “immediately the battalion commander issues a ceasefire order, but again there’s another burst of fire towards the third figure and he also die. This was against our rules of engagement,” he explained.
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The military identified the three hostages as Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and Samer Talalka, abducted from nearby Kibbutz Nir Am. They were among about 250 people taken hostage during Hamas’ October 7 attacks in Israel that killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari earlier said that during fighting in 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 that 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. Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu described their deaths as an “unbearable tragedy” as hundreds of people gathered outside the defence ministry in Tel Aviv to call on his government to secure the release of 129 hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.
