Hamas terrorists doubtless executed the six Israeli hostages whose our bodies have been recovered from southern Gaza on Aug. 20, the Israel Defence Forces stated on Wednesday following a complete probe.
While the army stated it was not attainable to find out with absolute certainty how Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Yoram Metzger, Avraham Munder, Haim Peri and Nadav Popplewell have been killed, their our bodies have been discovered with gunshot wounds, not like their six guards, who’re believed to have died in an Israeli Air Force strike within the space.
The military probe famous that investigators have been unable to conclude when the hostages have been shot – earlier than the strike, throughout it, or after it. However, the IDF believes the six males wouldn’t have survived the airstrike regardless.
At the time of the February 14 IAF strike, Jerusalem “had no info, not even a suspicion, that the hostages have been within the underground compound or its neighborhood,” in line with the assertion, which burdened that the strike would have been known as off “had such info been out there.”
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi introduced the ultimate findings of the investigation to the households of the slain hostages on Wednesday.
“In this extended warfare, which started on a really tough day, the mission of returning the hostages alive accompanies us at each second,” stated Halevi.
“The IDF is assured that the fight advances their return, however within the context of fight we now have additionally made errors.”
Following the dying of the six captives, it was determined that any airstrike assembly “particular standards” should be pre-approved by the IDF Intelligence Directorate’s Headquarters of the Hostages and Missing Persons.
Hamas propaganda has repeatedly accused the IAF of killing hostages throughout the 14-month-long aerial assault on the Gaza terrorist group.
Immediately after the six corpses have been recovered from the Hamas tunnel over the summer time, their households have been knowledgeable that bullet fragments have been found in a minimum of a few of their stays.
The IDF had decided the deaths of 5 of the captives a number of weeks earlier, with solely Munder presumed alive till the retrieval operation.
At the time, then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant hailed the restoration of the hostages’ our bodies as a “daring and harmful operation within the Hamas tunnels in Khan Yunis.”
And on Aug. 31, Israeli forces in Rafah found the our bodies of slain hostages Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, Eden Yerushalmi and IDF Master Sgt. Ori Danino.
According to examinations performed by the L. Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv, the six have been shot by their captors a number of occasions at shut vary days earlier than their our bodies’ discovery, indicating that hostages was executed as Israeli forces closed in on their underground location.
Reuters cited an inner Hamas doc on Wednesday night as saying that the terrorist group had indications that the IDF was planning the rescue of a number of hostages, just like the raid that freed Noa Argamani, Andrey Kozlov, Almog Meir Jan and Shlomi Ziv in June.
The confidential doc, dated Nov. 22, tells terrorist operatives to execute hostages if such an operation takes place and “to not take into account any repercussions of following the directions.”
Jerusalem believes that 97 of the 251 hostages taken throughout the Oct. 7, 2023 assault stay in Gaza after 425 days. Hamas can also be holding two civilians who entered Gaza in 2014 and 2015, and the our bodies of two Israeli troopers killed throughout “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014.
