One in 20 people dead or wounded in Gaza, majority of residents forced to flee

AFP | Palestinian Territories

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Israel said its forces rescued yesterday four hostages alive from a Gaza refugee camp where the govern-ment media office reported at-tacks left 210 Palestinians dead and hundreds wounded.

The war has brought widespread devastation to Gaza, with one in 20 people dead or wound-ed, according to the territory’s health ministry. Most of Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants are displaced.

In Gaza City, five people were killed overnight yesterday when an Israeli warplane bombed the Mhana family home, emergency services said.

‘Good condition’

The Israeli military said the four rescued were in “good medical condition”. They had been kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’s October 7 attack that sparked war with Israel, now in its ninth month.

Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, had been rescued from two separate buildings “in the heart of Nuseirat” camp in a “complex daytime operation”, the military said. They were among 251 captives seized by the Hamas fighters in their October attack on southern Israel.

There are now 116 hostages remaining in Gaza, including 41 the army says are dead.

Number of victims

The Hamas media office said “the number of victims from the Israeli occupation’s massacre in the Nuseirat camp has risen to 210 martyrs and more than 400 wounded”. The group earlier accused Israeli forces of engaging in “brutal and savage aggression on Nuseirat camp”, with a Gaza hospital providing an initial death toll of 15 in heavy Israeli strikes in central areas of the territory, including Nuseirat.

Israeli police said an officer was mortally wounded during the rescue operation. It was carried out despite growing international pressure on Israel after a deadly strike on a UN-run school in Nuseirat where displaced Gazans were sheltering.

Keep fighting

Hamas’s Qatar-based leader Ismail Haniyeh vowed to keep fighting. “Our people will not surrender, and the resistance will continue to defend our rights in the face of this criminal enemy,” Haniyeh said in a statement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced regular street protests demanding a deal to bring the captives home. Pressure increased after troops retrieved the bodies of seven hostages from the Gaza Strip last month.

Essential

US President Joe Biden welcomed the rescue operation, saying: “We won’t stop working until all the hostages are home and a ceasefire is reached. That’s essential to happen.” He was speaking in Paris alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, who also congratulated the families for the release of the hostages. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the rescue “an important sign of hope”. Near Nuseirat yesterday, an AFP photographer saw scores of Palestinians fleeing the Bureij camp on foot, fearing further Israeli strikes.