When the four Israelis woke up in Gaza City on Saturday, Hamas had held them hostage for 245 days. The buildings in which they were held, two low-rise concrete apartment blocks, looked much like other nearby residences in a civilian neighborhood full of Palestinian families.
Within a few hours, the captives, three men and a woman, would be reunited with their own families, the result of a long-planned, risky rescue operation that would use the full power of the Israeli military to devastating effect.
“I’m very excited,” one hostage, Noa Argamani, 26, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in a phone call after her release. “It’s been so long since I heard Hebrew.”
The rescue effort involved hundreds of intelligence officers and two commando teams who simultaneously stormed the houses holding the hostages, the Israeli military said.
In an apartment, where the male hostages were imprisoned, a shootout occurred between soldiers and Hamas guards, according to the army and the video it released of the encounter. Later, under a hail of gunfire, the truck in which three hostages and a wounded Israeli officer were being evacuated broke down and was surrounded by militants, Israeli officials said.
In an effort to give rescuers enough time and ample cover to free the captives, the military said, the air force began attacking dozens of nearby targets. Many Palestinians became aware of the fighting only when they heard bombs exploding.
Dozens of local residents, including children, died during the rescue operation. Health authorities in Hamas-controlled territory put the toll at more than 270. The Israeli military said the figure was less than 100. Neither the Israeli military nor Palestinian health officials provided a breakdown of civilians and fighters killed in the stroke.
The previous period
Weeks before the raid, Israeli intelligence officials identified two buildings, about 600 feet away, where they believed the hostages were being held.
In May, Israeli intelligence officials determined that Ms. Argamani, whose capture at a music festival by militants on October 7 was captured on a widely shared video, was being held in a family’s apartment near the Nuseirat market, he said. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army’s chief spokesman, told reporters. Nearby, in another family’s apartment, were the three male hostages: Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41.
The house in which they were being held belonged to Abdallah Aljamal, according to the Israeli military. Aljamal’s death was confirmed on Sunday by the Gaza Government Media Office, which said he had worked for the Hamas-affiliated Palestine Now news agency.
“We decided to carry out the operation in both apartments because if we had chosen only one of them, the risk of the terrorists killing the hostages in the other would have been too high,” Admiral Hagari said.
In preparation for the mission, the military “built models of these houses for practice,” Admiral Hagari said, adding that coordination between the two teams had to be “as precise as a brain operation” so that a mistake would not occur. in a group. to problems for the other.
The raid
On Saturday morning, as the sun approached its scorching midday zenith, residents of Nuseirat left the warmth of their apartment buildings. Outside, they went to work, shopped at the market and visited their relatives.
“It was very normal and the streets were full of life, people selling and buying things,” said Bayan Khaled abu Amr, 32, who had left home that morning to visit his uncle.
Fifty miles away, Israeli officers crowded into the command room of the Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency, in Tel Aviv. “The tension in the air,” Admiral Hagari said, was “very, very high.”
There, around 11 a.m., General Herzi Halevi, the army’s chief of staff, uttered the word “Let’s go,” authorizing commandos from Israel’s YAMAM counterterrorism unit to begin the raid.
Soldiers from the unit launched two vehicles that looked like local trucks, Israeli officials said, and drove to each of the buildings where the hostages were being held.
Khalil Abdul Qader al-Tahrawi, a 60-year-old store owner, said he was sitting outside his store when he saw people dressed in uniforms from the Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas, approach the building where the protesters were located. Tree men. They were later found detained.
The group, he said, seemed “suspicious and strange,” especially because “they went up to the building with ladders and came back down pointing their weapons everywhere.” He said he believed they were Israeli commandos.
Other witnesses described men they also believed were Israeli special forces operators, but dressed in civilian clothes.
Israeli officials declined to say whether Israeli forces had disguised themselves during the attack.
Moments after General Halevi authorized the operation, troops simultaneously attacked both buildings. Ms. Argamani was kept under guard in a locked room and her captors were quickly killed before they realized what was happening, Israeli officials said.
“At the Noa Argamani building,” Admiral Hagari said, “they were completely surprised by our forces.”
The escape
Around the time the team assigned to free Ms. Argamani was taking her to a helicopter extraction point along Gaza’s Mediterranean coast, the team working to rescue the three men in the other building began to being shot at, Admiral Hagari said.
That’s when Arnon Zmora, 36, an officer with the YAMAM unit, was shot and wounded, according to Admiral Hagari. Body camera footage released by Israeli border police shows Israeli troops finding the male hostages inside a residential apartment building, even as they continued to exchange gunfire with militants off-screen.
In the images, edited to blur the soldiers’ faces and eliminate bloody images, the hostages are seen leaving the building and climbing through a tree-filled field as gunfire erupts around them.
“Hamas members shot them,” said al-Tahrawi, the store owner.
More militants joined the fight, according to Admiral Hagari, “running through the streets with RPGs,” an acronym for rocket-propelled grenades. “There was a lot of fire around us,” he said.
As Argamani approached the beach in a vehicle, the other truck used in the rescue broke down, according to Israeli officials, who requested anonymity to discuss a clandestine operation. To provide cover for the stuck truck, officials said, the air force began bombing the nearby area, effectively creating a shield of fire.
“Suddenly, I heard a loud bomb and the sound of some missiles around that mosque,” said Abu Amr, the woman who had been visiting her uncle. “I don’t remember the exact time, but maybe 11:20 am.”
“Again a large, loud missile was heard and gray smoke rose,” Ms. Abu Amr added. “People started screaming.” In the chaos of the bombing, she said, “the children were screaming; “Women fell while running.”
Israeli ground forces stationed nearby headed to the disabled truck and transferred the hostages and Chief Inspector Zmora, the wounded officer, to another vehicle, Israeli officials said.
From there, they quickly headed to the beach, where the second of two helicopters was waiting for them. The first had already taken off with Mrs. Argamani on board.
Footage released by the military showed soldiers walking hostages along the beach while a helicopter kicked up clouds of sand.
The consequences
“We call hostages diamonds, that’s why we say we have them in our hands,” Admiral Hagari said.
Chief Inspector Zmora was evacuated to an Israeli hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
On Sunday, the hallways and corridors of the last major medical center in central Gaza, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, remained “densely packed” with new patients, after more than 100 bodies were recovered. taken there on Saturday, said Khalil Daqran, a hospital official. Most of the bodies have since been buried or claimed by relatives, he added.
Medical facilities, already packed before the Israeli rescue mission in nearby Nuseirat, were overwhelmed, said Dr. Abdelkarim al-Harazin, 28, a doctor who works there.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said about 700 people had been injured.
Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon contributed with reports.