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Israeli hostage Noa Argamani reunites with father after Gaza rescue
Noa Argamani was reunited with her father on Saturday, June 8, after an Israeli security operation rescued her and three other hostages alive in Gaza, the Israeli government said.
An Israeli operation Saturday to free four hostages kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival during the militant group’s Oct. 7 attacks and held in the Gaza Strip took weeks to plan. But the mission was only authorized in the last few days, according to Israel’s chief military spokesperson.
Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40, were rescued after 246 days in captivity. They were said to be in good health and being reunited with their families.
Details about the rescue raid, Israel’s largest since the war began eight months ago, were still emerging. Hamas is still holding 116 Israeli hostages, a mixture of civilians and soldiers. Some of them are likely dead.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari in a news conference described the raid as a “complex” daylight special operation involving hundreds of troops in coordination with police and members of the Shin Bet internal security agency.
“They are back home in Israel. They are alive. They are well,” Hagari said, of the freed hostages.
Hagari said the mission was based on “precise” intelligence that was “very complex to obtain.” He said that Israeli troops came under fire from Hamas while the operation was taking place and that one Israeli special forces soldier was badly wounded. He later died. The freed hostages, three men and one woman, were freed from two separate houses in the residential neighborhood of al-Nuseirat, in central Gaza.
Argamani, a Chinese-born Israeli citizen, is perhaps the most well-known of the freed hostages internationally because video footage showed her being forcibly taken from the Nova festival on the back of a motorcycle.
“Don’t kill me!” she can be heard screaming to her kidnappers.
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Israel’s hostages by the numbers
Israel has now rescued a total of seven hostages since Oct. 7. Saturday’s rescue was Israel’s third such operation since that date. Israeli soldier Ori Megidish, 18, was rescued in late October.
Hostages Fernando Marman, 61, and Louis Har, 70, were rescued from Rafah, in southern Gaza, in February. Three Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed by Israel’s military in Gaza in December.
Hamas killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel during its Oct. 7 attacks. Some 251 were taken hostage.
As part of a temporary November-time truce between Israel and Hamas, 105 hostages were freed in return for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Israel’s military believes that of the 116 hostages who are still thought to be held by Hamas in Gaza as many as 41 could be dead, according to its tallies.
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It’s not immediately clear how Saturday’s rescue will, if at all, impact ongoing negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reach a new truce connected to a hostage and prisoner release deal.
Senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, told the Reuters new agency after the announcement that “regaining four captives after nine months of fighting is a sign of failure not an achievement.”
Israeli hostages freed; Palestinians killed
Israel’s operation Saturday began around 11 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET), Hagari said.
Shortly afterward, news reports emerged saying that several dozen Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on al-Nuseirat and other areas in central Gaza. It was not immediately clear if those Palestinian deaths were directly connected to Israel’s hostage rescue mission. Heavy Israeli airstrikes were carried out in the area.
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian lawmaker based in the West Bank, put the al-Nuseirat death toll higher. He said, citing Gaza’s Hamas-controlled ministry of health, that at least 150 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s raid.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said his country’s troops operated “under heavy fire in the most complex urban environment in Gaza.” He described the operation as “one of the most heroic and extraordinary operations I have witnessed over the course of 47 years serving in Israel’s defense establishment.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a relatives group that’s been pressuring Israel’s government to do a deal with Hamas, praised the “heroic operation” by Israel’s army, calling it a “miraculous triumph.”
