In an early morning operation on Monday, the Israeli military carried out airstrikes in the southern Gaza city of Rafah that killed almost 100 people, according to local officials. The Israeli military had taken two Israeli-Argentinean men hostage by Hamas on October 7.
After being held captive for 128 days, Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, were released from captivity. Since then, the two guys have been reunited with their families and are in generally good health.
Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said reporters on Monday that “highly sensitive and valuable intelligence” was the source of the intricate rescue operation. It involved an IDF tank brigade, police special forces, and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.
At 1:49 a.m. local time, Israeli special forces broke into the building housing the hostages and launched the operation. The two were discovered “in the hands of Hamas terrorists” on the second floor. Hagari said that there were additional Hamas militants positioned in nearby buildings.
Throughout the operation, opposition was experienced by Israel’s ground soldiers. Hagari claimed that once the captives were located, they were escorted out of Gaza under fire from Hamas and given protective hugs by police special forces. They were then transferred to a secure location in Rafah for medical care before being evacuated out of the city by aircraft.
With Har and Marman’s liberation, the Israeli military has only been successful in freeing captives in Gaza twice since the terror incident of last year. An earlier attempt in December failed when three Israeli hostages were mistakenly identified as threats by Israeli soldiers, leading to their shooting and death.
Although Israel will celebrate the operation to release the two individuals, there were reports of serious casualties inside Gaza due to the Israeli Air Force providing “aerial cover” for the ground operation.
One minute after the raid started, at 1:50 a.m., the IDF reported, airstrikes started.
The Gaza health ministry, which is under Hamas control, reported 94 deaths during overnight strikes in Rafah, while the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) claimed over 100 deaths. Neither group disclosed the number of militant deaths.
The health ministry presumably updates death toll figures only when bodies have been identified, which accounts for the difference. Both parties predicted that the number would increase.
Medical facilities in Rafah “cannot handle the large number of injuries due to the Israeli occupation’s bombardment,” according to the head of Abu Yousef Al-Najjar Hospital.
Rafah’s Al Kuwaiti hospital, where medical professionals are shown treating a wounded guy on the hospital floor in one incident and attempting to revive a lifeless infant in another. Another video showed a distraught woman clutching the body of a toddler covered in white fabric.
According to the Rafah municipality, at least two mosques and about a dozen houses were damaged on Monday.
The ferocity of the bombing raised the possibility that Israel was getting ready for its long-expected ground assault on the city, but the IDF declared in a statement that the strikes were over. Regarding whether the strikes were related to an upcoming ground attack, CNN has questioned the IDF for clarification.
The international community is concerned about a possible incursion into Rafah since the city has turned into a final resort for Palestinians escaping southward to escape Israel’s air and ground operations. The UN estimates that over 1.3 million people—the majority of whom are internally displaced from other sections of Gaza—are in Rafah.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has referred to the city as a “pressure cooker of despair” due to the acute shortages of food, water, medicine, and shelter.
Rafah borders Egypt, and the only entry point into that nation has been closed for months, along with the rest of Gaza’s borders, meaning that any military operation there will probably end in a carnage as residents there have no other means of leaving.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, dismissed criticism of the ground invasion strategy, claiming that refusing to invade Rafah would be the same as instructing Israel to lose the war. He promised to give civilians safe passage, but he didn’t say anything.
Since October 7, almost 28,100 Palestinians have died in the enclave, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
