It was a busy weekend morning at the market in the refugee camp. Nuseiratremember Osama Abu Asi. The fighting could be heard in the distance, but it did not scare away the buyers, who carefully examined the few bags of flour and sugar that he had spread on his blanket.
Abu Asi said he did not know that nearby, in an apartment one floor above the street, sat a young, dark-haired woman known around the world, who was last seen in a viral video clip entering. in Gaza on a motorcycle on October 7, shouting: “Do not kill me!”.
Was Noa Argamanione of 250 Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas.
His 245th day of captivity had begun like most others until, shortly after 11 a.m., he heard a knock on the door, followed by screams. Suddenly, the room was filled with Israeli soldiers. “They are rescuing you.””, they shouted in Hebrew.
“They just came, just like that.”Argamani, 26, would tell his close friend Yan Gorjaltsan hours later.
Saturday’s rescue operation, which freed four Israeli hostages and killed more than 270 PalestiniansAccording to Gaza health authorities, it was one of the most dramatic and deadliest episodes of Israel’s war against Hamas. This account is based on more than a dozen interviews with former and current Israeli military officers, family members of hostages, and Palestinian eyewitnesses, as well as analysis of verified video footage.
Argamani and three other Israeli hostages would be extracted from central Gaza and reunited with their family in a complex operation in daylight in which thousands of soldiers, technicians and analysts participated.
It was planned for weeks and executed without a hitch., according to Israeli officials, until the tense commando raid turned into a shootout with militants. The Israeli army responded with a massive air assault on the crowded streets of Nuseirat.
Bombs continued to fall and the streets echoed with screams, Abu Asi said.
It was like “the day of judgment.”
The operation took months preparing.
Since October 7, Israeli intelligence units, with the help of their American counterparts, have studied digital clues, drone recordings and interceptions to locate the hostages. Recently, they have located four hostages in Nuseirat who had been kidnapped at a party in the desert, just outside the border fence with Gaza.
Among them was Argamani, whose heartbreaking pleas for mercy were one of the defining images of the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel. officials of the Israel Defense Forces They said they knew she had been moved around Gaza more than once during her captivity. Analysts confirmed that she was now being held alone in a first-floor apartment; three other hostages –Almog Meir Jan22 years old, Andrey Kozlov27, and Shlomi Ziv41, were on the third floor of a nearby building.
Planning began in strict secrecy. Mockups of the two buildings were built for troops to rehearse on, according to authorities. It was a reflection of the preparations carried out by Israeli commandos before their famous rescue of more than 100 hostages in Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976.
For weeks, members of Yamama special anti-terrorist unit; Shin Bet, the country’s internal security agency; and the IDF They rehearsed again and again for an unusual daylight mission.
“We understood that in those apartments with those guards, the day would be the ultimate surprise,” said Rear Admiral Daniel HagariIDF spokesperson.
It would mean greater risk when entering and exiting buildings. And it would mean more Palestinian civilians on the streets.
Some soldiers who participated in the drills did not know their exact purpose, officials said.
“Keeping it a secret was one of the hardest things”said a Givati brigade commander identified as Lieutenant Colonel Ziv in an account of the operation published by the IDF.
Commanders bided their time and deployed military bulldozers to prepare the ground inside Gaza.
“We worked on the roads around Nuseirat and in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, so that vehicles could easily pass at the moment of truth,” said the major. Eliavcommander of the Kfir Brigadewhom the IDF identified only by his last name and position in accordance with its regulations.
Finally, on Thursday, the military was ready to act. A meeting of the Security Cabinet was canceled to avoid leaksaccording to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.
The first Minister Benjamin Netanyahu He met that night with a small group of senior security leaders to give the green light to the plan.
On Saturday morning, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi; Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet; and Hagari They crowded into a command room full of video monitors.
At 11 a.m., Halevi said: “Forward”.
Thousands of people participated in the operation, according to the IDF. It took about 25 minutes for the special forces to arrive from Israel to Nuseirat. It is still unclear how they got there.
Palestinian witnesses described the arrival of some troops in two undercover vehicles, one of which resembled trucks used by Israel to bring commercial goods into Gaza. The other was a white Mercedes truck, stacked with furniture and other belongings, a common sight in a camp that houses thousands of displaced families.
“The IDF did not use any civilian trucks”the army said in a statement.
Two videos verified by Washington Post They show a box truck marked with a brand of dish soap traveling in the company of Israeli armored vehicles on a highway a mile west of the raid. The vehicles are heading west, away from Nuseirat, and it is unclear whether the videos were filmed before or after the raid.
The white Mercedes is visible in a third verified video filmed from the balcony of a residential building in the center of the camp. Two ladders can be seen leaning against the side of a house, leading to an upper floor next to the truck. “Here they have arrived”says the voice of the woman who surreptitiously filmed the six-second scene.
Hussam al-Arouqi33, was returning from the bakery with his brother Issam, he said, when two men in civilian clothes and about 10 heavily armed soldiers emerged from the back of the Mercedes. The soldiers opened fire and wounded his brother three times.
“He fell to the ground, started bleeding” and tried to crawl away, Hussam said, adding that Apache helicopters They flew at low altitude.
It took more than an hour, he said, before it was safe enough to reach Issam and take him to the hospital in a donkey cart. Issam remains in critical condition.
Israeli troops managed to reach Argamani’s apartment without alerting his guards, according to Hagari, who was watching video footage from drones flying overhead and from soldiers’ helmet cameras. Almost simultaneously, other units entered the building where the three hostages were held, about 220 meters away.
“In the Noa Argamani building we completely surprised them”Hagari said.
The young woman, dazed, was put down the stairs into a vehicle and taken to a helicopter that was waiting for her nearby.
The soldiers conveyed the good news with a coded phrase: “We have the diamond in our hands”.
The helicopter took off towards a hospital near Tel Aviv. At 12:20 p.m., Argamani’s family received the news that she was free.
Then, the operation in Nuseirat had been diverted. The guards with the three male hostages had not been taken by surprise. A Yamam commander was shot as they entered the building. A shootout ensued, revealing the covert mission.
“Immediately, it became a war zone.”said Amir Avivi, a reservist brigadier general and former deputy commander of the IDF’s Gaza division who was briefed on the operation.
The soldiers managed to get the three hostages and the wounded man into a vehiclebut it broke down under fire from rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Hamas, according to authorities. At one point, Avivi said, they were forced to abandon the vehicle and seek shelter in a nearby building.
The commanders requested air support.
“The air force started shooting to give them a corridor, a wall of fire”said retired major general David Tsurformer commander of Yamam.
The explosions shook the narrow streetswhich in recent weeks have been filled with families displaced by the Israeli offensive in southern Gaza.
There was killing everywhere, Abu Asi said, including dead children and women. The roads were full of “tanks, artillery, body parts and wounded… nothing more than a corridor of blood.”
He seized the tuk-tuk he used to transport his merchandise and transported about two dozen dead and injured people to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospitalin Deir al-Balah, where, he said, corpses covered the ground.
“They shot and aimed at everything.””said paramedic Abdel Hamid Ghorab from the nearby al-Awda hospital, which had to struggle to treat the avalanche of wounded. “None of us could know what was happening outside.”.
The Gaza Health Ministry said that at least 274 people had died; It was unclear how many were combatants.
On social media, people frantically shared news of airstrikes and troop movements, posting names and photos of loved ones they were separated from. Tributes to the dead arrived later.
“The aviation hit dozens of military objectives for the success of the operation”the IDF said in a statement. “Hamas, in a very cruel and cynical way, keeps hostages inside civilian buildings”.
The Israeli forces, with the three hostages, moved away from the market and eventually reached the beach. Not far from the temporary dock built by the US Navy to deliver humanitarian aid, I was waiting for a second helicopter.
The rescued captives got inside and carried the wounded officer up. He would later die from his injuries.
The helicopter carried the three hostages to freedom as the war raged behind them.
(c) 2024, The Washington Post
