Day 331 - Israel shattered as 6 murdered hostages' bodies recovered

[Music] welcome to the times of Israel's daily briefing today is Sunday September 1st day 331 of the war with Hamas I'm Amanda Borel Dan here in our Jerusalem offices joined by our military reporter Emanuel Fabian hi Manny thanks for joining me hi Manda the IDF declared the deaths and extracted the bodies of six hostages from Gaza over the weekend we'll hear what we know about the circumstances of their killings this morning three Israeli police officers were killed in a shooting attack in the southern West Bank and will hear about how two car bombs exploded in the G Aton area of the West Bank late Friday night we'll learn about the status of the ongoing war in gazi even as some pauses in fighting have commenced to vaccinate Palestinian children for polio all this and more when we're back the bodies of six hostages abducted Alive by Hamas on October 7th were recovered from a tunnel in southern Gaza Rafa a few days ago shortly after they were murdered by terce according to the Israel Defense Forces they were named as hsh Goldberg Poland Aiden Yosi Ori danino Alex lubov Carmel Gat and alog cusi shortly after after the announcement this morning president Isaac Herzog said in a statement that the heart of an entire nation is crushed into pieces in the name of the entire state of Israel I hold their families in my heart and ask forgiveness forgiveness for not being able to return your loved ones home safely several hours after the IDF announcement prime minister Benjamin Neto also released a statement saying that his government is committed to a ceasefire deal and he laid the for the failure to reach an agreement on the terrorist group he said along with all the citizens of Israel I was shocked to the depths of my soul by the terrible cold-blooded murder of six of our abductees he expressed his deep appreciation for the IDF and shinb security service fighters who quote risked their lives for the return of our sons and daughters the hostage and missing families Forum has called for a general strike tomorrow as it demanded that Neto take responsibility for the abandonment of the hostages several opposition politicians have also joined in as well as the Israel business Forum which represents most private sector workers from 200 of the country's largest companies Manny let's talk about the operation and what we know about the killings of the six so as far as we understand from the Army these six hostages were alive up until a few days ago since their abduction on October 7th so all but caramel Gat were taken hostage from the Nova party near raim carel Gat was taken hostage from kibuts ber and they were brought to Gaza it's unclear whereabouts in Gaza they were previously held but recently they were in the Rafa area and the Army has been operating in Rafa for several months now and the same area where the hostage faran aladi was rescued just a few days ago so about a kilometer away from there troops were investigating this tunnel complex which the Army believed hostages were being held in and over the weekend as the troops were searching the tunnel they found the bodies of these six hostages according to the Army's assessments this is yet to be confirmed by an autopsy but they believed that the hostages were killed by their capts one or two days before they were discovered so they were discovered on Saturday afternoon they were likely killed on Friday or on Thursday at the earliest there were no terrorists inside the tunnel there was no resistance that the troops faced but above ground there were Hamas terrorists that were killed by troops as the soldiers approached the area it's possible that those were the captors that killed the hostages and then fled but it is not fully known yet where the capts went so the bodies were found in the afternoon it took several hours to actually get them out of the tunnel and extract them from Gaza and then very early this morning they were identified officially and the families uh were notified that they were killed and and their bodies were brought back it is a crushing day here in Israel and of course the ripple effect is still being felt as I mentioned there may be a strike tomorrow but let's talk about what is happening on the ground in Gaza and late last week the IDF announced it had wrapped up a 3-week operation in the southern Gaza Strip and also that the Kamas Terror groups RAF Brigade had quote unquote collapsed as a result of the idea Force is ongoing offensive in the city so what is the current status of the Kamas brigades as far as we know so hamas's fighting force in Gaza is pretty much dismantled across the entire strip aside from one area in central Gaza the nerat and Dak area those are the areas where there is also the most sort of dense Palestinian population it's part of the humanitarian Zone some of it so the army has not yet operated there reportedly fears of causing widespread harm to Palestinian civilians but also the fears that hostages may also be held in those areas so it's a lot more complicated to operate there as for Rafa where these hostages were found and killed of course they were murdered there and the other hostage faran aladi was also found there Hamas is basically not operating there the Army has seen Hamas gunmen fleeing the Army more and more uh leaving the tunnels and trying to just flee the area uh the Army has basically full control of all of Rafa right now it's able to carry out these operations inside tunnels with no resistance even with faran aladi the same situation happened he wasn't killed but the Hamas Capt fled the area will try to flee to the humanitarian Zone and the Army says that has been um ambushing said terrorists who have been trying to flee in recent days hunis like you mentioned there was an operation that that just wrapped up during that operation uh the Army destroyed 6 km worth of tunnels they also recovered the bodies of six other hostages who had also been killed and there were around 250 gunmen the Army said it killed as well during this operation and that was the I believe the fourth time now that the armies entered hunas so right now there's no presence there there's only only in rafan in the central Gaza Strip Corridor the narim corridor where the Army also has been operating there have been fa clashes there as well there's been several soldiers who have been killed in the central Gaza Corridor area in the past few weeks there was a soldier who was seriously wounded there over the weekend as well during clashes with Hamas but in general hamas's fighting force is largely gone it's not able to carry out large scale attacks it's fleeing the Army in most areas and the large concentration of Hamas Fighters and terrorists are all among the population in the humanitarian Zone uh it's an area that the Army will need to reach eventually and it will be very complicated to actually carry that out Manny we've often talked about indications that some of the hostages have been killed either on October 7th or in the following months and do we know plus minus about the numbers right now of the 101 that are still in Gaza so Hamas on October 7th abduct 251 people 105 were released in November during the hostage deal four were released before that in a separate sort of deal it wasn't really a deal with Hamas but they released four other hostages eight hostages have been rescued Alive by troops in Gaza and the bodies of 37 have been recovered including the six just over the weekend and that number also includes the three who were mistakenly killed by the Army at the end of last year during an operation in shaja as they tried to escape their capts of the hostages in Gaza 97 of them were abducted on October 7th and there were four more two Israeli civilians and two soldiers from 2014 and 2015 of the 97 abducted by Hamas on October 7th at least 33 are confirmed dead by the IDF so what that means is 33 are people who the Army has concrete intelligence or even evidence to suggest that they were killed some of them were killed on October 7th and their bodies were taken to Gaza some of them were killed during their captivity I say at least because there are some others on the list of remaining nearly 70 who the Army believes are dead but doesn't have exact confirmation of their death so it's very difficult to say that the rest are presumed alive because that's not completely true the rest are both presumed alive and there isn't enough information to say that they're actually dead but 33 are confirmed dead well all of this has been going on there's another operation that has begun in the Gaza Strip and that is the operation to vaccinate swaths of children Palestinian children and a health official said Saturday that the polio vaccination campaign has begun and the campaign involves two doses and aims to cover over 640,000 children under the age of 10 as I understand it they're meant to be 3-day temporary ceasefires being carried out in different parts of the strip how is this going to be staggered do you know so I wouldn't call it a ceasefire the Army is calling it and also I think the UN are calling it humanitarian pauses and what that is is basically IDF operations are continuing but within certain areas of Gaza between certain hours the Army won't be carrying out operations it to basically allow the population to be vaccinated these sort of pauses have been used before the armies used it to enable the delivery and distribution of humanitarian Aid so this isn't a new mechanism but as far as I understand from Israel there will be a pause between today September 1st till the 3rd in central Gaza between 6:00 a.m. and 2: and then in southern Gaza they'll do the same thing between September 4 and 6 again between 6:00 a.m. and 2: p.m. and then the last stage will be in Northern Gaza between September 7th and September 9th again between 6:00 a.m. and 2: p.m. during those hours of the day in these specific parts of Gaza the Army will be not carrying out operations to allow the vaccination effort to go through smoothly without any um problems we'll go to a short break and then discuss what's happening in the West Bank and we're back three Israeli police officers were killed in a shooting attack in the southern West Bank this morning Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a police car on Route 35 just east of a checkpoint between the West Bank and Israel before fleeing the scene this attack came after terce on Saturday morning very early detonated two car bombs in the southern West Bank's gush Aton settlement block two soldiers were lightly injured and one moderately hurt in the explosion iions Manny let's start with the shooting and work backwards chronologically so tell us what do you know of the incident that saw three police officers killed this morning so as far as I understand a group of Palestinian gunmen drove along the Route 35 highway it's near tumia uh there's a junction there that's uh just east of the checkpoint the police vehicle I think was on the side of the road it was um maybe carrying out some operation there waiting for something and the Palestinian uh gunman opened fire at the vehicle they then abandoned their car and fled on foot as far as I'm understanding from the Army and the Army has now launched a Manhunt for these asants this area of the shooting attack is in the southern West Bank it's not far from kbron and that's where the two terrorists set out from on Friday night when they carried out the attempted car bombing attacks in giton which is just North of kbron so while we've been talking a lot about the Northern West Bank and the operation that's been going on there and many Terror attacks that have been carried out from there the southern West Bank also seems to be heating up slightly who is taking credit for these attacks is any organization taking any credit so right now there has been no claim for this shooting or for the car bombs Hamas has praised them but they haven't taken responsibility they did take responsibility for the attempted or it's intended suicide bombing in Tel Aviv a couple weeks ago but not for these incidents okay let's talk about the car bombing which I I find very difficult just to get a grasp of the timeline on it what what happened there so on Friday night two Palestinians drove from Theon area in the southern West Bank headed north to gusion and carried out a coordinated attack almost simultaneously one of the terrorists drove to a gas station at the gion junction tush those who live in the area will know and set off this car bomb just by the gas station it caused damage to one of the stores there it didn't cause a damage to the rest of the gas station but it exploded there but he had actually gone out of the vehicle and then troops dispatched to the scene after this explosion went off encountered the terrorist he tried to attack them he wasn't armed with them I think and then he was shot dead by the soldiers and during that shooting three soldiers were were wounded they're all now listed in light condition as a result of shrapnel from the bullets that were flying around in the area among the injured was also the commander of the iion regional Brigade Colonel G rich but he wasn't hospitalized he continued to operate at the scene he was hit in the arm slightly by a bit of shrapnel and then about 15 20 minutes later the second terrorist rammed his vehicle through the entrance to kitur it's a settlement very close to the gusion junction and he breached into the community IDF soldiers in the area opened fire at the vehicle to try and stop it it continued further into the uh Community didn't reach any of the homes in the area and what happened was one of the local security officers in his own vehicle rammed into the terrorist's vehicle bringing him to a halt he then got out and shot the terrorist dead and then a few seconds later the terrorist's car exploded from the bomb that was in it that was the timeline of the incident very unusual attack it's unclear if the two terrorists intended to Target the gas station or not the Army is still investigating whether or not he stopped there to maybe carry out a second bombing in kitur and the first one went in first they're still investigating really what the actual plan was but in any case only a few people were very lightly injured nothing particularly serious but the intended attack could have been much more devastating if the terrorists would have reached whatever their target was supposed to be last week Hamas official khed mashal called in a speech in Istanbul for the resumption of suicide attacks and we're seeing that definitely playing out in front of our eyes and at the same time the IDF has launched a counterterrorism operation in several West Bank cities killing multiple gunmen that was launched last week as well is this operation ongoing and if so where is it the operation is still ongoing it initially began in tar uh Janine and the far Camp which is near tubas the action is now largely focusing on Janine the Raiden far wrapped up after I believe around 48 hours maybe a bit less even and taram as well was also about 2 days bit more than 2 days and now Janine has come into the focus there was a clash there on Saturday during which a soldier was killed and several others were wounded in all the Army says it's killed 26 gunmen so far many of them in drone strikes there have been several drone strikes in Janine into and in Farah it's a major operation it's probably the largest one that has occurred or the longest one that's occurred in in recent years is but it's not you know it's not insanely over the top it's not um going back to the second inter sort of operations that we saw in the West Bank uh it's definitely a large operation there's the Army's bolst to forces to carry out this raid but imagine like the usual West Bank raids but lasting slightly longer lasting a few days instead of an overnight operation it's definitely been high intensity there's definitely been a lot of clashes and drone strikes being carried out and the Army is saying that it's working to dismantle these Terror organizations that have based themselves there so far there's been a senior Hamas Commander who's been killed a senior Islamic Jihad Commander who's been killed you know the heads of these Terror networks in Janina and in toar have been eliminated in this operation and in general there aren't compared to the Gaza shrip of course there aren't that many gunmen in these areas you know the low hundreds the Army estimates so these operations will will continue for a few days they'll wrap up but it's not going to solve the the terrorism problem in the West Bank there's still going to be other Hamas commanders that will take the place of the ones who are killed the army is not going in there like it's going in Gaza to completely eradicate a terror organization it's going in there to dismantle plans to carry out these major attacks as much as it can and when they start to plan additional attacks they'll go back in it's been like this for the past 25 years so this isn't going to be the operation that changes anything really and what kind of cooperation do you imagine there is with the Palestinian Authority officials and their forces so the Palestinian Authority doesn't really have much of a presence in the northern West Bank it's practically lost control of Janine Naas even toar to Palestinian Terror groups to Hamas and Islamic Jihad so the coroporation there is very difficult the Palestinian Authority don't have any real control over these areas so there's very little that the Army can ask them to do so the Army then needs to operate itself to basically get rid of these Terror organizations I would say that in the southern West Bank especially in heon the Palestinian Authority has a bit more control uh and there I think we will see more cooperation in working to prevent these attacks you know the attack over the weekend and Gushi almost launched from Kon and the Army also encircled the area and is search for suspects it detained six suspects during that and so there is likely some cooperation there with the PA but not in in the northern West Bank it's much much more difficult Manny thank you so much for all of your updates and insights on this very difficult day thank you thanks for listening to the times of Israel's daily briefing please check out another installment tomorrow this episode was produced by Zev Ley if you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode please drop us an email to podcast timesofisrael.com until tomorrow shalom [Music]