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Israeli forces shot and killed three hostages in Gaza on Friday after mistakenly identifying them as a threat, authorities said, more civilian deaths in a campaign that has killed over 18,700 people in the besieged enclave.
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The Israel Defense Forces expressed “deep remorse” for the deaths of Yotam Haim, Samer Al-Talalka and Alon Shamriz, who had been held captive in Gaza for more than two months. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was mourning the men in what he called an “unbearable tragedy.”
Their killings in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City illustrated the unrelenting intensity of the fighting in northern Gaza in the third month of Israel’s war to eradicate Hamas as a political and military force.
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The deaths were announced by the IDF hours after White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel in the conflict during a visit to Tel Aviv. Sullivan played down differences over Israel’s conduct of the war and agreed with Israeli officials that it would continue for “months.”
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An Al Jazeera journalist was killed and another was wounded in a drone strike in Gaza on Friday. Cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa died in the attack near a school in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Wael Al-Dahdouh, chief of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau and a face of the network’s war coverage, was wounded. Al-Dahdouh’s wife and two children were killed in an airstrike in October.
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Israel-Gaza war
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Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza mistakenly shot dead three Israeli hostages, the IDF said. Follow the latest news on the Israel-Gaza war.
For context: Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war.
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In Shejaiya, the IDF said, troops “mistakenly identified 3 Israeli hostages as a threat and as a result, fired toward them.”
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Then “suspicion arose” over their identities. The bodies were transferred to Israel for further examination and identified there as men who had been taken during the Hamas-led raid of Israeli communities near Gaza on Oct. 7.
Haim and Shamriz lived in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip. Haim, 28, was a self-taught speaker of Italian and a drummer in a metal band, according to Liat Bell Sommer, a spokeswoman for the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum.
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Haim sent his mother a video of himself in his kibbutz apartment shortly before he was kidnapped, she told the Associated Press in October. He had been scheduled to perform Oct. 7.
Shamriz, 26, was a computer engineering student who played for the Sha’ar Ha’emek basketball team, the forum said in an Instagram post this week calling for his return.
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Al-Talalka, 25, lived in the town of Hura, Sommer said. He worked with his family at a chicken hatchery near the kibbutz of Nir Am.
Amid global outrage at the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza, U.S. officials including President Biden have in recent days expressed frustration with the intensity of the Israeli onslaught. Some have said they would prefer Israel to wind up major combat operations in weeks, not months.
But Sullivan gave no indication that the Biden administration is prepared to exert new pressure on Netanyahu or his government.
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After meeting with the prime minister and other top officials, Sullivan told reporters that they discussed the timeline of the war and the importance of avoiding civilian casualties.
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But he said he had not come to tell Israel what to do and called suggestions that the administration was pressuring his hosts to reduce the intensity of its assault a “misunderstanding.”
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“I’m here today on President Biden’s behalf to emphasize our continued commitment to support Israel in its fight against Hamas,” Sullivan said.
A doctor went to Gaza to help. What he saw there still haunts him.
Biden administration officials told reporters Thursday that they wanted Israel to scale back its to focus on targeted operations against Hamas. Biden this week issued his toughest criticism yet of the close U.S. ally, warning that it risked losing international support over what he called the “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza.
But Sullivan told reporters that the war was always intended to be prosecuted in phases, with an eventual transition from high-intensity bombing to operations rooting out Hamas leaders on the ground. He couldn’t say how much more time it would take to get to the transition, but he expected the war would last several more months.
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“There’s no contradiction between saying the fighting is going to take months and also saying that the different phases will take place at different times over those months,” he said.
“We’re not here to tell anybody you must do X, you must do Y,” he said. “We’re here to say this is our perspective as your partner, your friend.”
Sullivan suggested that he may have been more critical in his private conversations with Israeli officials: He said it was important to keep the discussions behind closed doors to achieve “convergence.”
U.S. officials have repeatedly said they prefer to convey any criticism of Israel behind closed doors to retain leverage in the relationship.
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The Biden administration believes Israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties, Sullivan said, but he told Israeli officials that the United States would like to “see the results match up to that.”
Unguided ‘dumb bombs’ used in almost half of Israeli strikes on Gaza
Ultimately, he said, the blame for the carnage lies with Hamas, which attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 240 more hostage to trigger the war, and for hiding and fighting among civilians, which he said places “an incredible burden” on Israeli forces.
“What I think has been lost a little bit in this whole debate is the responsibility that sits with Hamas,” he said.
Sullivan later traveled to Ramallah in the West Bank to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. On Thursday, he met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss ways to create a sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel-Gaza war Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza mistakenly shot dead three Israeli hostages, the IDF said. Follow the latest news on the Israel-Gaza war.
A U.S. intelligence assessment has found almost half of the munitions Israel has used in Gaza since the war began have been unguided bombs, a ratio that some arms experts say helps explain the conflict’s enormous civilian death toll.
Hostages: More than 100 held in the Gaza Strip have been released. Here’s what we know about those released by Hamas so far.
Oct. 7 attack: Hamas spent more than a year planning its assault on Israel. A Washington Post video analysis shows how Hamas exploited vulnerabilities created by Israel’s reliance on technology at the “Iron Wall,” the security barrier around the Gaza Strip, to carry out the deadliest attack in Israel’s history. Traders earned millions of dollars anticipating the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, a study found.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has a complicated history. Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war and see the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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