Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed deep regret this evening for the killing of three Israeli hostages by Israeli soldiers in the north of the Gaza Strip.
"It is an unbearable tragedy. The entire state of Israel mourns tonight," Netanyahu said, announcing continued efforts to bring all the hostages home safely.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said earlier that "during the fighting in Shujaiya (in the northern Gaza Strip), the army mistakenly identified the three Israeli hostages as a threat" and that "soldiers opened fire in their direction and killed them."
They either escaped or were abandoned by their captors, the spokesman said, promising a transparent investigation.
The bodies of the murdered hostages were returned to Israel.
The army emphasized that the hostages were killed "in an active combat zone" where soldiers "were engaged in a continuous battle for several days" against Hamas fighters, Agence France-Presse reported.
In addition, deep condolences were expressed to the families of the victims and it was announced that the "mission of locating the missing and returning the hostages home" continues.
With the killing of three Israelis, the number of hostages whose deaths have been confirmed has increased to 22.
About 240 hostages were forcibly taken by Hamas to the Gaza Strip on October 7.
One hundred and ten hostages have been released, and 129 are still in captivity, but it is not known if all of them are alive, according to the latest information from the Israeli authorities.
Family associations are calling for a ceasefire until all the hostages are freed, fearing they will be killed by the kidnappers or killed in the clashes.
A week ago, the Israeli army admitted the failure of a hostage-free operation in which two soldiers were seriously wounded. Hamas claims that an Israeli hostage was killed in that failed operation and released footage of his remains. The family confirmed the identity of that young man.
A member of the War Cabinet, the former Chief of the General Staff of Israel, Benny Gantz, said that his heart was broken because of the murder of three hostages, abducted on the first day of the war on October 7, from a kibbutz in the south of the country.
"It is our responsibility to win that war and part of that victory will be bringing the hostages home. We will do everything to bring them home alive," Gantz said.
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One Al-Jazeera journalist was killed today and another was wounded in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, the Qatari television company reported.
Editor-in-Chief Muhamed Moavad announced the news of the death of cameraman Samer Abu Daka on the platform Ix (X).
Al Jazeera previously reported that its Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahduh and Abu Daka were wounded at a school in Khan Yunis in the southern Palestinian territory in what is believed to be an Israeli drone strike.
It was first reported that Samer Abu Daka was seriously wounded, but he remained at the scene of the attack for hours, as the emergency services could not get there as the road was blocked by the rubble of the house.
Wael Dahduh was wounded in the hand and transferred to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, an AFP journalist said.
"The team in Gaza, especially Wael and Samer, played a key role in revealing the extent of the destruction and horror of Israeli crimes. Without their dedication the horrors of Gaza would not have been revealed to the world," Al Jazeera said.
The Israeli army did not respond to a request by France Press to comment on the incident.
Journalists came to the UN Refugee Agency (UNRWA) school in Khan Yunis to report after the first attack, and then a second attack took place, Hamas, which rules Gaza, said.
That organization claims that in the second attack "journalists were deliberately targeted" and that it was "an attempt to intimidate them so that they would not document the (Israeli) massacres committed in the Gaza Strip."
Vael Dahduh's wife and two children were killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza on October 25.
More than 60 journalists and media workers have been killed since the beginning of the war between Hanas and Israel on October 7, caused by unprecedented attacks on the south of Israel, according to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists.
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Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said this evening that during the fighting in Shediya in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, soldiers mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat, shot and killed them.
He said it was "a tragic incident for which the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) bear responsibility."
"It is an area where soldiers encountered many terrorists, including suicide bombers," the spokesman added.
Yotam Haim, kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Az, Samer Talalka from Nir Am were killed, and the name of the third hostage was not published at the request of the family, Israeli media reported.
In the attacks on the south of Israel on October 7, Palestinian extremists led by Hamas killed over 1.200 people and kidnapped and took about 240 hostages to the Gaza Strip.
During the one-week truce in the war between Israel and the Islamic Hamas, 105 hostages (81 Israelis, 23 Thais and one Filipino) were released in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian women and minors from Israeli prisons.
Earlier, Hamas released four Israeli women, and one was released at the beginning of the ground offensive in Gaza at the end of October.
As previously stated by the Israeli authorities, 135 hostages are still being held in Gaza, but not all of them are alive.
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The military wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket attack on Jerusalem tonight.
Israeli authorities have released a video that they say shows a rocket landing near a hospital in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
There were no immediate reports of injuries in the rocket fire. Israel's rescue service said it had been notified of the strikes.
Rockets fired at central Israel set off missile warning sirens across Jerusalem, the AP reported earlier.
It was not immediately clear how many rockets were fired, but the reporter of the American agency said that the "Iron Dome" anti-missile system reacted several times.
Israeli media reported that it was the first time in the previous month and a half that sirens sounded in Jerusalem.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, rocket attacks have been more frequent on Tel Aviv and areas bordering the Gaza Strip.
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The United States of America welcomes Israel's decision to open the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza for humanitarian aid, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement today after visiting Israel, reports Reuters.
"We welcome this significant step," Sullivan said, adding that he was informed of the decision before leaving Israel.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said today that there is no misunderstanding between Jerusalem and Washington and estimated that the fight against Hamas in Gaza will last for months.
He stated at a press conference in Tel Aviv that the US and Israel agree that there will be a transition from the current high-intensity phase of the conflict to precise operations.
"The White House has had very good discussions about the timing and the transition to the next phases of the conflict, but we are not here to tell anyone you have to do x, you have to do epsilon (y)," Sullivan said after talks with Israeli officials.
In recent days, news reports stated that the White House is putting pressure on Israel to end the current phase of the war in a few weeks, due to concerns about the growing number of civilian casualties in Gaza, Israeli media reported.
Sullivan also said that he did not hear anything in the meetings with Israeli leaders that would lead him to answer the hypothetical question of how Washington would react if the current phase continues.
Israeli colleagues, he explained, said their goal was to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to prevent civilians from being harmed.
When asked who will rule Gaza after the war, since Israel refuses to take over leadership in Ramallah in another Palestinian territory in the West Bank, Sullivan did not answer directly, but said the US believes a revitalization of the Palestinian Authority is needed, among other things.
Sullivan assessed that anyone who will be engaged in the Palestinian Authority, starting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, with whom he will also meet today, will have to work hard.
The US National Security Adviser also told reporters that Hamas' tactics are a huge burden on the Israeli military, a burden that is not common these days, "hiding behind civilians while waging war with Israeli forces."
Israel, he said, "does not have the ability to face Hamas on the battlefield" so that civilians are excluded.
Referring to October 7, when the war began, Sullivan said Hamas "masquerades 1.200 people in a brutal and savage manner" and then turned around and returned to Gaza to hide behind the civilian population, using them as human shields. using both hospitals and schools for military purposes, vowing to attack and destroy Israel again.
Sullivan believes that Israel has a key responsibility to protect civilians and provide humanitarian aid for them, but that Hamas is responsible for the conflict and that this has been somewhat forgotten in the entire debate.
Speaking about Israeli warnings about a potentially larger conflict with the Lebanese extremist Hezbollah in the north, he emphasized that Washington still believes that the threat can be dealt with through diplomacy and does not require starting a new war.
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that any attempt to separate and isolate Gaza from the Palestinian state would be unacceptable, reports Radio Free Europe.
"Emphasizing that Gaza is an integral part of the State of Palestine, the president affirmed that any attempt to separate or isolate any part would be unacceptable," Abbas said in a statement released after a meeting with Jake Sullivan, the White House's national security adviser, Agence France-Presse reported. pres.
During a visit to Israel, US official Sullivan called for Gaza, ruled by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, to be returned to Palestinian control at the end of the war.
At the end of the war, "it would not be right" for Israel to keep Gaza under long-term occupation, Sullivan said in Tel Aviv before leaving for a meeting with Abbas in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
The government of Israel, he emphasized, "made it known that it has no intention of keeping Gaza under occupation for the long term and that the control, administration and security of Gaza should be left to the Palestinians."
A court in the Netherlands rejected a request by human rights groups to block the government from exporting parts of F-35 fighter jets to Israel, reports Radio Free Europe.
Human rights groups claim the planes are enabling war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Judges at the District Court in The Hague said they must leave the Dutch government a large degree of freedom when it comes to weighing political issues in decisions on arms exports.
Human rights groups claim that Israel has used F-35 jets, for which the Netherlands supplied spare parts, in large-scale bombings in Gaza that could amount to war crimes.
In the world's first ruling on arms exports to Israel since an October 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas sparked the war, Dutch judges found it likely that the F-35 jets contributed to the alleged violation of the laws of war.
"To anyone who has seen the images of the armed conflict, read the news and heard the comments of Israeli ministers on the reaction to the terrorist attack on October 7, it seems evident that there are violations of humanitarian law," the verdict said.
Human rights groups said they would certainly appeal the verdict.
Israel denies committing war crimes in the attacks on Gaza, which followed a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 that killed 1.200 Israelis and took about 240 hostages.
The Netherlands is home to one of several regional warehouses for US-owned F-35 parts that are then distributed to other countries - including Israel in at least one shipment since the October 7 Hamas attack.
The Israeli army has found the bodies of three Israelis - a civilian and two soldiers - who have been held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip since the October 7 attack on Israel, Radio Free Europe reports.
The Israeli military said the three bodies were identified in a process carried out by medical and forensic experts.
The circumstances of their murder have not been specified, nor where in Gaza they were found.
The Israeli Defense Forces announced that they captured and destroyed the headquarters of the Hamas Shejaya Battalion, based in the eastern part of Gaza City, Radio Free Europe reports.
IDF spokesman Avichay Adrai announced on the X network that the Hamas fighters in that unit were "eliminated" by the attacks of planes, tanks and engineers that destroyed the tunnel in the complex.
Shejaja district was the scene of intense fighting during the conflict.
The IDF leveled several apartment blocks there, and earlier this week nine Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush in the area.
The IDF also stated that they attacked "terrorist infrastructure in the heart of the city of Khan Younis". They also claim to have destroyed a weapons cache and several vehicles found in the tunnel, which they say were used in the October 7 attacks on southern Israel.
The war in Gaza will move into a new phase focused on precise attacks on Hamas leaders and intelligence-led operations, American National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said today in Israel, Radio Free Europe reports.
Sullivan did not provide details about the timing of the change in the intensity of the war.
"The terms and the timing of that were obviously the subject of a conversation I had with Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu," Sullivan said at a news conference.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced that they have found the bodies of two Israeli soldiers who were taken hostage by Hamas during an attack on southern Israel on October 7, Radio Free Europe reports.
Nik Bayzer (19) was on duty at the IDF base at the Erez crossing, between Gaza and Israel, when he was attacked.
Ron Sherman, 19, was kidnapped while serving as a coordination and liaison officer at the Gaza police headquarters, the IDF said.
Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said it was "disgraceful" that Israeli soldiers were suspended after singing Hebrew songs in a mosque, despite the army saying they were acting against "the code of conduct within a religious institution", Radio Slobodna reports. Europe.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) criticized the behavior of soldiers who, as seen in social media posts, were praying and singing at a mosque in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Ben Gvir said on the X network that the soldiers were "heroes" who "risked their lives for us in the operation in Jenin".
He also criticized Defense Minister Joao Galant for "bringing politics into the IDF" and "damaging the morale of its fighters."
The IDF said those responsible were "immediately removed from operational activities."
The European Union and 14 other countries, including Great Britain, Australia, Canada and France, in a joint statement called on Israel to "take urgent and concrete steps to address the record high level of settler violence in the occupied West Bank" where Palestinians live.
In addition, it was assessed that the settlers' attacks on Palestinians were "unacceptable", Israeli media reported.
The statement warned of "great concern over the record number of attacks by extremist settlers", especially since October 7, when the war between Israel and Hamas, which rules the West Bank, the occupied Palestinian territory and the Gaza Strip, began.
"Israel, as an occupying power, must protect the Palestinian civilian population in the West Bank. Israel's failure to protect Palestinians and prosecute extremist settlers has led to almost complete impunity in which settler violence has reached unprecedented levels," the statement said.
According to reports, the settlers carried out more than "343 attacks, killing eight Palestinian civilians, injuring more than 83 and driving 1.026 Palestinians from their homes."
Statements by Israeli officials against such violence are welcome, but words "must turn into actions," the statement concluded.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the Six-Day War in 1967. Almost half a million Jewish settlers now live in that territory among the three million Palestinians.
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Dozens of people were killed or wounded in airstrikes on Khan Yunis, the new epicenter of the war in the south of the Gaza Strip, the Hamas Health Ministry announced this morning.
In Gaza, telecommunications were interrupted again last night.
Israel stepped up airstrikes on the Gaza Strip today, warning that the war against Hamas is likely to drag on for months despite US appeals for restraint.
"There will be more heavy fighting in the coming days," Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
He said the army would use "new methods of fighting", such as planting explosives in places frequented by Hamas fighters.
The Israeli army announced today that it returned the body of French-Israeli hostage Elia Toledan from Gaza to Israel. Details of when and how he died are not given. His body was claimed earlier this week.
In Gaza, as a result of the attack last night, telecommunications were interrupted again, the Palestinian operator said.
In the war, more than 1.300 people died on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, and the highest number of victims occurred on the first day, October 7, in the attacks of Palestinian extremists led by Hamas on the south of Israel.
Around 240 hostages were then taken to the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli authorities, there are still 135 hostages in Gaza, but not all of them are alive.
Almost 18.800 people died in Gaza, mostly women and children.
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