Israeli military frees four hostages; more than 200 Palestinians killed, Gaza health officials say

Israeli security forces rescued four hostages, including Noa Argamani, the face of the October 7 abductions, in a broad daylight raid in central Gaza on Saturday. Dozens of Palestinians were killed in the operation, enclave officials said.

According to a statement by the Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Securities and Exchange Commission and the Israel Police, the rescued hostages are Argamani (25), Almog Meir Jan (21), Andrey Kozlov (27) and Shlomi Ziv (40).

They were among those kidnapped by Hamas during the Nova music festival on October 7.

They were taken to the Sheba Tel-HaShomer Medical Center near Tel Aviv, where authorities said they are in “good medical condition.”

The United States has provided intelligence in support of the operation, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter. The New York Times first reported on the U.S. role.

According to the Israeli military, the rescue operations took place in the wake of an attack on the city of Nuseirat in the center of the Gaza Strip. Nuseirat is home to a refugee camp and the community where the four hostages were hidden.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 210 people were killed and another 400 injured in the attack and rescue operation. It is unclear how many civilians were killed. Observers and organizations outside the war zone generally condemned the bloodshed.

The news of the release of the four hostages was greeted with jubilation in Israel. On a Tel Aviv beach, crowds cheered as lifeguards announced the news over a loudspeaker and read out their names one by one.

A video circulating on social media shows Argamani being reunited with her father. After her rescue, she also spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone. “I’m very excited,” she said. “I haven’t spoken Hebrew for so long.”

Yan Gorjaltsan, a friend of Argamani’s from her hometown of Be’er Sheva, told NBC News he and a group of friends were on their way to Tel Aviv to visit her. “These are the happiest days of our lives,” he said. “You can’t believe how we feel.”

United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said in a statement that the rescue efforts “should not have come at the cost of at least 200 Palestinians killed and over 400 injured, including children.”

The Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the large-scale attack by Israeli forces as a “horrific massacre” in a refugee camp.

Video from an NBC news crew on the scene showed the aftermath of the incident in Nuseirat, including a flood of injured people at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, including the bodies of surviving children wrapped in pink-soaked gauze.

After the rescue operations, the bloodied and burned bodies of Palestinian adults and children were scattered across the city’s streets. A video showed bodies piled up near the door of a house.

Cars were smoking, the charred bodies of passengers still bore witness to the time of the attack, while people wandered the streets of Nuseirat looking for missing relatives and children carried away their dead peers.

The hospitals, which were already suffering from supply shortages, were overwhelmed. Doctors Without Borders described the situation at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital as “a nightmare” in a statement.

The organization said its doctors were at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital and Nasser Hospital “to treat an overwhelming number of seriously injured patients, including many women and children.”

Chris Hook, a Doctors Without Borders worker in Nasser, said in the statement that the attack killed 50 people within an hour at the facility where he works.

The Medical Corps organization said in a statement that it was “overwhelmed” by the attack. Its field hospital in central Gaza had admitted 220 cases, 40 of which were classified as critical. “New patients are arriving every minute.”

In a briefing, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said they were aware of “about 100” Palestinian casualties, but he did not know “how many of them are terrorists,” Reuters reported.

The Israeli military said it came under fire during the operation and that one officer was injured and later died.

The rescue came as pressure mounted on Netanyahu to reach an agreement to release the hostages, with thousands of people protesting regularly in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which campaigns for the release of the hostages, called the rescue a “miraculous” triumph, adding that the government should “release all 120 hostages still held by Hamas.” It called on Hamas to accept the ceasefire proposed by President Joe Biden, which also includes the release of the hostages remaining in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called the rescue “a great light in a terrible darkness” and welcomed the hostages.

Argamani, a data science and engineering student, was captured on video screaming as she was carried away on the back of a motorcycle; the roughly ten-second clip became a symbol of the hostage crisis in Israel.

For her relatives, the efforts to secure her release were a race against time, as her mother Liora is suffering from incurable brain cancer. Argamani was 26 years old during her imprisonment. Her boyfriend Avinatan Or is said to still be in Gaza.

According to the Times of Israel, Almog Meir Jan was discharged from military service months before the attack. He tried to escape the festival with a friend, but only got a short distance before he was captured.

Shlomi Ziv worked as a security guard at Nova and had called his sisters during his escape attempt.

Andrey Kozlov had recently moved to Israel from Russia and had also worked as a security guard at the festival.

Saturday’s operation is the second time that Israeli forces have rescued hostages alive from Gaza since October 7. In February, two hostages were rescued from the southern city of Rafah during a night mission.

In May, the bodies of three hostages were recovered from the Jabalia camp in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas captured around 240 hostages in the attacks on October 7, which left around 1,200 Israelis dead. Around half of the hostages were released during a week-long ceasefire in November. According to Israel, more than 120 hostages are still being held captive, around a quarter of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel declared war after Hamas militias invaded the country on October 7, which ended with the kidnapping of 240 people and around 1,200 deaths.

Israel has taken the war to Hamas strongholds in the Gaza Strip and drawn civilians into the maelstrom. Two million people, the majority of the area’s population, have been displaced. According to the Gaza Strip’s Ministry of Health, 36,731 people have died in Gaza.

Israel is under increasing pressure from the United States and other countries to increase the precision of its warfare, which is often conducted with American equipment, and to reduce the number of civilian casualties.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com.