Freed Israeli hostage recalls Gaza airstrike that killed 2 captives

By Zein Khalil

JERUSALEM (AA) – A freed Israeli hostage has recalled an airstrike on her hideout in which two other Israeli captives were killed.

Noa Argamani, 26, was released along with three other hostages by the Israeli army in a military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday.

Her release coincided with a deadly Israeli bombardment that killed at least 274 Palestinians and injured nearly 700 others in the camp.

“The Israeli army bombed the house where he was being held, killing two captives,” Argamani told Israel Hayom newspaper.

She identified the two slain hostages as Yossi Sharabi and Itai Tversky.

“I saw the missile hitting the house, and I was sure that I was going to die, but I survived,” Argamani recalled.

She said Hamas members moved her from house to house and allowed her to come out from time to time to breathe air, while she was disguised as an Arab woman.

Her remarks confirmed earlier statements by Hamas in mid-January that two Israeli hostages had been killed in an Israeli missile attack in Gaza.

Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 Hamas attack despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.

More than 37,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and nearly 84,500 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.