Israel’s military freed four hostages in Gaza on Saturday after a daylight operation in Nuseirat in the centre of the enclave that local officials said killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians.
The rescue operation was the largest conducted by Israel since the start of the war against Hamas. The rescue of one woman and three men — Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv — brings the number of hostages brought back alive by Israel’s military to seven.
The four were kidnapped from the Nova music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’s October 7 attack, in which militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took about 250 hostage. Roughly half of the hostages were released during a truce last year in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.