By Mohammed Majed
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - Hamas’ military wing on Saturday said that the Israeli army attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip killed some Israeli hostages.
Earlier in the day, Israel said that it rescued four Israeli hostages from the central Gaza Strip after a military operation in the refugee came.
"What the Zionist enemy carried out in the Nuseirat area in the heart of the Strip is a compound war crime, and the first who suffered from it are hostages,” Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesman Abu Obaida said in a post on Telegram.
“The enemy succeeded in releasing some of its hostages by committing horrific massacres, but at the same time, killed some of them during the operation," he said, without mentioning a specific number.
Abu Obaida said that “the operation will pose a great danger to the enemy hostages, and it will have a severe impact on their conditions and lives.”
Earlier, the Hamas-run Government Media Office said that at least 210 Palestinians were killed and more than 400 injured in severe Israeli airstrikes targeting Nuseirat refugee camp, areas east of Deir al-Balah, and al-Bureij and al-Maghazi camps in central Gaza, coinciding with a sudden incursion of vehicles east and northwest of Nuseirat.
Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7 despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.
More than 36,800 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 83,500 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.
*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala