GAZA: Hamas’ government media office said at least 210 people were killed Saturday in Zionist attacks on a central Gaza refugee camp from which four hostages were rescued. "The number of victims from the Zionist occupation’s massacre in the Nuseirat camp has risen to 210 martyrs and more than 400 wounded,” the press office said in a statement.
The Zionist entity said its forces rescued four hostages alive on Saturday from a Gaza refugee camp. The military said the four were in "good medical condition”. They had been kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the October 7 attack. 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 militants in their October attack. There are now 116 hostages remaining in Gaza, including 41 the army says are dead. Footage posted on social media showed Argamani emotionally reuniting with her father after her rescue, as well as beachgoers erupting into cheers in Tel Aviv when a lifeguard announced the four had been freed. Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which has pressed the government to reach a deal that would free the captives, hailed the rescue as a "miraculous triumph”.
The Hamas media office said "the number of victims from the occupation’s massacre in the Nuseirat camp has risen to 210 martyrs and more than 400 wounded”. The Islamist group earlier accused Zionist forces of engaging in "brutal and savage aggression on Nuseirat camp”. Zionist police said an officer was mortally wounded during the rescue operation.
It was carried out despite growing international pressure on Zionist entity after a deadly strike on a UN-run school in Nuseirat where displaced Gazans were sheltering. "The message this morning to Hamas is clear: we are determined to bring back home all the hostages,” military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said. Hamas’ 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.
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.
On Saturday, Netanyahu said the security forces "have proven that Zionist entity does not surrender to terrorism”. He pledged to return the rest of the captives. His office also released a video of him speaking with Argamani on a mobile telephone. She said she was "very excited” to return home.
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 on Saturday, an AFP photographer saw scores of Palestinians fleeing the Bureij camp on foot, fearing further airstrikes.
The operation came days after the airstrike on the Nuseirat school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which a Gaza hospital said had killed 37 people. The military said it killed 17 "terrorists”. UNRWA condemned Zionists for striking a facility it said had been housing 6,000 displaced people. Zionists accuse Hamas and its allies of using civilian infrastructure, including UN-run facilities, as operational centers - charges the militants deny.
The war has brought widespread devastation to Gaza. Most of Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants are displaced. In Gaza City, five people were killed overnight when a warplane bombed the Mhana family home, emergency services said. Yussef Al-Dalu said his neighbor’s house had been reduced to rubble. "I know that only defenseless civilians live in this house. They are not part of any resistance (group),” he told AFPTV.
Zionist military offensive has killed at least 36,801 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. Seventy were killed in the past 24 hours, it said. Zionist entity faces growing diplomatic isolation, with international court cases accusing it of war crimes and several European countries recognizing a Palestinian state. Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced Saturday his government would suspend coal exports to Zionist entity "until the genocide stops”.
US diplomacy
Netanyahu also faces pressure from within his right-wing government. After the announcement of the hostage rescue, Zionist war cabinet minister Benny Gantz cancelled a news conference that was scheduled for Saturday, his office said. Gantz, a centrist former military chief, said last month he would resign if Netanyahu did not approve a post-war plan for Gaza by June 8. Latest efforts to mediate the first ceasefire in the conflict since a week-long pause in November appear to have stalled a week after Biden offered a new roadmap. World powers and Arab states have backed the proposal that Biden said includes an initial six-week pause and hostage-prisoner exchange as well as stepped-up delivery of aid into Gaza.
Hamas has yet to respond. Zionist entity has expressed openness to discussions but remains committed to destroying the Islamist group. Major sticking points include Hamas insisting on a permanent truce and full withdrawal - demands Zionists rejected. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit Zionist entity and key regional partners Egypt, Jordan and Qatar from Monday on his eighth Middle East trip since the war began.
Meanwhile, Zionist forces have attacked the Kuwait Specialty Hospital in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, setting large parts of it on fire. In a press statement, Director of the Kuwaiti Hospital, Dr Suhaib Al-Hams, condemned occupiers systematic targeting of hospitals in the Gaza Strip and putting them out of service. He described the health situation in Rafah as extremely catastrophic after all Rafah hospitals were put out of service due to Zionist assaults.
He noted that dozens of dead bodies and injured people are scattered in the streets of the Rafah Governorate as the occupation forces prevent medical teams from reaching them. Al-Hams called on international health institutions to stand up to their responsibilities and urgently stop the shedding of Palestinian blood and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The Zionist forces repeated attacks on the Kuwait Specialty Hospital in Rafah, one of a few places offering medical care for over 1.2 million people in the southern Gaza Strip city, forced it to shut down on May 27. In defiance of all international calls and the International Court of Justice demand, the occupation forces have continued and expanded their ground and air attacks on the densely populated city of Rafah since May 6th. During their ongoing offensive, Zionist forces carried out dozens of brutal massacres, killing hundreds and injuring thousands of civilians and displaced people in the city.- Agencies