The IDF soldiers who mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza on Friday violated the rules of engagement, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi announced on Saturday night.
The soldiers shot at the hostages even though they screamed “Help!” in Hebrew, were bare from the waist up, and held up a white flag.
Halevi said that at this stage the IDF was treating it as a tragic error and violation under very difficult circumstances without a condemnation, but there could still theoretically be a criminal process at some later date led by the IDF legal division.
Typically, in a case like this, the division waits to probe the issue until it receives the full and final command investigation.
But there have been cases where initial evidence was strong enough to launch an initial criminal probe and where the soldiers involved were immediately arrested and questioned under caution, which has not yet been done here.
The incident happened in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City, an area of intense combat where Hamas terrorists have been operating in civilian attire and used complex deception tactics.
Some of those tactics have included trying to use white flags, stuffed animals, or seemingly harmless women to get IDF soldiers to approach an area, where some other terrorists then open fire or set off a remote explosive device.
The three hostages – Yotam Chaim, Samer Talalka, and Alon Shamriz, were all taken captive during the October 7 massacre against southern Israeli communities.
According to an initial probe, the hostages were standing near a building with the words “help” and “SOS” spray-painted on its exterior walls.
In addition, the IDF also found a message saying “three hostages – help,” on the buildings two days before the deadly altercation.
Initially, the military avoided the buildings with those messages believing that they were Hamas traps.
Eventually, one IDF soldier came into direct eye contact with the three hostages at a distance of dozens of meters.
The hostages raised a white flag, cried for help, and kept their upper bodies bare so that no one would suspect they were hiding a bomb under their shirts.
One IDF soldier fired on the three hostages.
Subsequently, the army has concluded that this initial fire killed two of the hostages, but only wounded the third one, who ran back into the building from which he had exited with the other two.
IDF battalion commander called to cease fire
At this stage, the battalion commander called on all IDF forces to cease fire as an operational matter to allow other forces in nearby buildings to exit without being hit by friendly fire.
Some minutes later, the wounded third hostage exited the building again, pleading for a second time to be saved. Two different sets of soldiers other than the original soldier who killed the other two shot him dead.
The IDF is still clarifying whether the three hostages had escaped Hamas’s captivity, whether their captors had been killed, or some other scenario.
Netanyahu said that Israel mourns the deaths of the three hostages accidentally killed Friday by the IDF as they escaped their captors in Gaza: Yotam Haim, 28, Alon Shamriz, 26, and Samer Talalka, 25.
“When I was informed about the terrible tragedy – it shocked me,” the prime minister said. The three men survived for 70 days and “were just a step away from freedom… and that’s when the disaster happened. It broke my heart;it broke the whole nation’s heart. Our hearts go out to the families in their time of sorrow,” he said.
“I have been haunted by one thought – “What would have happened if only something had been different?” I’m sure this thought is shared by all of you. We were so close to hugging them. But unfortunately, time cannot be turned back. Anyone who has fought on the battlefield knows that there is only a hair’s breadth distance between victory and disaster,” Netanyahu said.
He promised that the IDF would learn from the incident and apply those lessons to the battlefield in the future.
Meanwhile, the bodies of four other hostages were retrieved by the IDF.
On Saturday night, the organization representing kidnapped persons revealed that Inbar Haiman, 27, of Haifa, was killed by Hamas. The implication was that her body had been recovered by the IDF from captivity with Hamas in Gaza.
Three others were announced on Friday, including 28-year-old French citizen Elia Toledano, and Cpl. Nik Beizer, and Sgt. Ron Sherman, both 19 years old.
The IDF said that an “identification procedure” had been carried out by medical officials, military rabbis and forensic experts.
Soldiers from the 551st Brigade and Unit 504 in the Intelligence Division, under the command of Division 162 helped rescue the bodies from Hamas captivity, the IDF announced on Friday morning.
France is in “immense pain” over the news that Elia Toledano, a young man and French citizen who had been held hostage in Gaza amid the conflict with Israel, has died, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Friday.
“We share the grief of his family and loved ones”, Colonna said in a post on social network X, after Israeli authorities had confirmed the identity of Toledano, whose body had been found in Gaza.
Toledano was part of the group of people kidnapped by Hamas terrorists while taking part in an open-air music festival in early October, the newspaper Le Figaro reported.