The Israeli military said a hostage was rescued Tuesday from a Gaza tunnel, more than 10 months after the 52-year-old Israeli Bedouin was seized during the Hamas attack that triggered a devastating war.
Kaid Farhan Alkadi is one 251 people abducted by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attack on southern Israel, 104 of whom are still captive in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.
The military said in a statement that “Alkadi was rescued… in a complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip”, with spokesman Daniel Hagari later telling a media briefing that forces had found him in “an underground tunnel”.
Violence meanwhile raged on in the war that has ravaged the Gaza Strip, displaced nearly all of its 2.4 million people at least once and triggered a humanitarian crisis.
The civil defence agency in the Hamas-run territory said separate Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people in two refugee camps in central Gaza and Khan Yunis in the south.
At Israel’s Soroka Medical Centre where Alkadi was taken to, hospital director Shlomi Kodesh told AFP he “appears to be in good condition”.
“But anyone who was in tunnels for such an extended period of time is prone to significant medical problems” and Alkadi was kept for “continued evaluation”, Kodesh told AFP.
A resident of Rahat, a predominantly Bedouin Arab town in southern Israel, Alkadi had been working as a guard at a warehouse in one of the areas militants stormed on October 7, according to the military.
Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum welcomed the “miraculous” rescue and stressed “that military operations alone cannot free the remaining hostages”.
“A negotiated deal is the only way” to ensure the return of other captives, it said.
International mediators pushing for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal held talks in Cairo in recent days, as Israel and Hamas have publicly traded blame for delays in reaching an accord.
– US claims talks progress –
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced growing criticism from protesters accusing him of blocking a deal and prolonging the war for political gain, said Israel was “working tirelessly to bring all our hostages back”.
Relatives and supporters of hostages have piled pressure on the Israeli government in weekly protests demanding their return home.
Hostage rescues are rare, with Alkadi being the eighth freed alive by Israeli forces since the military began its ground operations in the Gaza Strip on October 27. Scores were released during a week-long truce in November.
In a video issued by Netanyahu’s office after he spoke with Alkadi, the hawkish leader said “military presence on the ground and continuous military pressure on Hamas” are required to secure the captives’ release.
A key sticking point in negotiations has been Israel’s insistence on keeping control of a Gaza-Egypt border strip to stop Hamas from rearming, something the militant group has refused to countenance.
Egyptian state-linked Al-Qahera news has said Cairo, which has been mediating the talks alongside Qatar and the United States, “will not accept any Israeli presence” on the so-called Philadelphi Corridor on the border.
The United States, Israel’s top arms provider, struck a cautious note of optimism on Monday regarding efforts to clinch a ceasefire agreement.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that “there continues to be progress”, and more talks involving lower-level “working groups” are expected in the coming days.
– ‘Indiscriminate’ –
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign since then has killed at least 40,476 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
In the latest violence, an Israeli strike on central Gaza’s Al-Maghazi refugee camp killed at least seven people, including three children from the same family, according to civil defence rescuers.
“We woke up to the sound of the explosion and shrapnel flying at us,” said Mohammed Yussef, who witnessed the strike.
“We came here and found dead and mutilated children and women… People are dying in vain and there is no safe area in Gaza. Where do we go?”
After the latest in a string of Israeli evacuation orders, the UN humanitarian office OCHA said its “ability to deliver essential support and services” had been “severely” hampered.
Amnesty International said two Israeli strikes on southern Gaza that killed at least 59 people in late May were “indiscriminate” and “should be investigated as war crimes”.
The rights group said its investigation had found that “Israeli forces failed to take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimise harm to civilians sheltering at camps for internally displaced people” while targeting Palestinian militants there.
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