The Israel Defense Forces revealed this Friday that they had mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip, after inadvertently identifying them as a threat.
In a statement, the IDF revealed that during combat in Shejaiya, its soldiers fired at hostages. “The IDF began reviewing the incident immediately,” the army said in a statement.
Two of the murdered hostages were quickly identified: they are Yotam Haim, aged 28, taken from kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, and Samer El-Talalqa, aged 25, who was taken from kibbutz Nir Am. The name of the third hostage killed by Israeli troops was not initially revealed at the request of the family, who later decided to make it public: it is Alon Shamriz, kidnapped from kibbutz Kfar Aza.
“The IDF expresses deep sadness over the incident and shares the mourning of the families”, reads a brief statement released by the Israeli forces.
The Israeli Prime Minister has already reacted, in a statement, to the accidental deaths of the three hostages. “Together with all the people of Israel, I bow my head in deep sadness and mourn the death of three of our beloved children who were abducted. My heart goes out to the bereaved families at this difficult time,” reads Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement.
Hamas took about 240 hostages in the October 7 attack on Israel; During the week of truce reached at the end of November, Hamas released more than 100 women, children and foreign citizens that it held captive in Gaza, in exchange for the release of 240 women and young people that Israel held captive, the majority without any indictment.
Israeli forces believe that more than 130 hostages are still in Gaza. The bodies of the hostages killed this Friday by the IDF were meanwhile taken to Israeli territory.
This Friday, the Al Jazeera station announced that its journalist, Samer Abu Daqqa, was also killed in a missile attack in Khan Yunis. The city in the south of the Gaza Strip has been hit by intense shelling in recent weeks. This Friday, a UN official told the BBC that Khan Yunis was the target of the harshest attacks so far since the start of the war.