After 246 days in captivity, four Israelis, taken hostage by the Palestinian militant group Hamas during the October 7 attack, were rescued by the Israeli forces on Saturday. A daytime operation, which happened after an extensive planning, saw Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv, being extracted and airlifted from Central Gaza.
The risky operation was codenamed 'Seeds of Summer' initially but was later changed to Operation Arnon after a security personal Arnon Zamora, who died in the Hamas fire during the mission.
Military officials said the mission was a "hair’s breadth" between success and failure. However, it was planned out weeks in advance, according to Tel Aviv-based 'The Times of Israel.' Though Hamas reportedly kept moving the hostages around Gaza to prevent Israeli rescue operations, the Israelis managed to get intel on hostages locations.
The report added that the counter-terrorism unit of the Israeli police conducted multiple mock drills practising the extraction from Nuseirat Gaza. According to military officials, these were "similar to the Entebbe raid" of 1976, when Israeli commandos rescued more than 100 hostages in Uganda.
Two days before Operation Arnon was launched, the military launched another operation in a region east of Nuseirat. This was to deceive Hamas's defences from Nuseirat.
Though previous operations were launched during nighttime, the troop decided to launch the mission during morning hours this time. On Saturday morning. At 11:00 a.m. the order was given to two Israeli units, the Yamam and Shin Bet, to raid two multi-story buildings in Nuseirat, where Hamas was holding the hostages. The buildings were about 200 meters apart, and a decision was taken to go for both simultaneously due to the possibility that Hamas may murder the hostages after identifying the rescue operation at the other location.
While Noa Argamani was held by Hamas guards alone in the home of a Palestinian family, the other three hostages were held at a separate home, also with guards. According to the IDF, Hamas pays such families to hold the hostages in their houses.
While Argamani’s rescue was relatively smooth, a major gun battle erupted at the home where Meir Jan, Kozlov, and Ziv were held. In the gunfire exchange, Arnon Zamora and the Hamas guards were killed.
Though the forces immediately tried to extract the hostages and severly wounded Zamora out of Nuseirat, their vehicle came under fire, causing it to get stuck in Gaza. Other forces quickly reached the scene to rescue them, bringing them to a makeshift helipad in Gaza, from where they were airlifted to Tel Hashomer Hospital in central Israel, The Times of Israel reported.
The operation claimed multiple civilian lives. While Hamas’s government media office said at least 210 people were killed amid the operation, Israel says 100 died. The Israel Defence Forces also placed the blame on Hamas for holding hostages and fighting in a dense civilian environment.
"We know about under 100 [Palestinian] casualties. I don’t know how many of them are terrorists," IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a briefing with journalists.