“Only sustained military pressure until total victory is achieved will free all our hostages,” the prime minister said in a statement released by his office.
Early Monday, Israel announced it had rescued two hostages in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the Hamas-run Health Ministry said regarding 100 Palestinians, including children, had been killed in heavy airstrikes overnight.
Israel is preparing for a ground invasion of a city on the border with Egypt where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken refuge from fighting further north.
Due to the dire humanitarian situation in Rafah, aid groups and foreign governments, including Israel’s key ally the United States, have expressed deep concern regarding the potentially disastrous consequences of expanding operations.
The military said in a statement early Monday that a joint operation between it, Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet and the police rescued two Israeli hostages in Rafah, 60-year-old Fernando Simon Marman and 70-year-old Louis Har.
According to the military, they spent almost 130 days in captivity.
The statement said they were abducted by the terrorist organization Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Yicchak on October 7 and that they were both in good health.
A shootout broke out as the hostages were being taken out of the building where they were being held, and airstrikes were directed at nearby buildings from which the shots were fired, the military added.
“Many terrorists were killed in this operation tonight and one of our fighters was slightly injured,” said military spokesman Daniel Hagari.
During the attacks on October 7, Palestinian militants took regarding 250 hostages, reports the AFP news agency, citing official Israeli data.
Israel says regarding 130 hostages remain in the Gaza Strip, but 29 of them are believed to be dead.
The Hamas attack in southern Israel killed regarding 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP assessment based on official figures.
Israel has responded with an unrelenting offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed at least 28,340 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
During a week-long truce in November, Hamas released dozens of hostages in exchange for more than 200 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Since then, Mr Netanyahu has come under increasing criticism and even calls for early elections, while relatives of the hostages have expressed frustration at the pace of the rescue.
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2024-05-13 15:08:44
