Israel troops kill 3 hostages after mistaking them for ‘threat’
- Soldiers shot Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer El-Talalqa during combat in Shejaiya, the army said in a statement
- The trio had either escaped or were abandoned by terrorists who held them captive, an army spokesman added
The Israeli army said its troops shot and killed three hostages on Friday after “mistakenly” identifying them as a threat.
“During combat in Shejaiya, the IDF [army] mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat. As a result, the troops fired toward them and they were killed,” the army said in a statement.
“The IDF began reviewing the incident immediately … Immediate lessons from the event have been learned, which have been passed on to all IDF troops in the field,” it added, expressing “deep remorse over the tragic incident”.
The army identified the hostages as Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, both taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza during Hamas’s October 7 attack, and Samer El-Talalqa, who was taken from Kibbutz Nir Am.
“This is an unbearable tragedy,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.