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The Israeli military confirmed on Sunday that three of the four hostages rescued by special forces from the central Gaza Strip over the weekend were being held in the home of Abdallah al-Jamal, a Palestinian journalist and member of the terrorist organization Hamas.
Rumors had been circulating on social media after Ramy Abdou, head of the Euromed human rights monitor, said in a post on X that soldiers entered the Al-Jamal family home during Saturday’s raid in Nuseirat and killed Abdallah and several family members, including his father, Dr. Ahmed Al-Jamal.
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Abdu posted a photo alongside the post of what appeared to be the Al-Jamal family home, but made no mention of any hostages possibly being held there. Abdalla Al-Jamal was a former spokesman for the Hamas-run Ministry of Labor in the Gaza Strip and a past contributor to several media outlets.
During the war in Gaza, numerous articles by Al-Jamal Palestine Chronicles This includes while three hostages — Almog Meir Yan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv — remain confined in their home. A fourth hostage, Noah Al-Ghamani, was rescued from a nearby building in an operation on Saturday.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said it and the Shin Bet security agency could confirm that al-Jamal and his family were holding three hostages at their home in Nuseira.
“This is further evidence that the Hamas terrorist organization is using civilians as human shields,” the army said.
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During the raid on Al-Jamal’s house, Yamam’s commander, Lieutenant Arnon Zmora, was fatally wounded by gunfire from Hamas terrorists. He died shortly after arriving at an Israeli hospital, and the rescue operation was later named “Operation Arnon” in his honour.
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Al-Jamal wrote one column for Al Jazeera in 2019 and there were rumors that he was the Qatari news outlet’s Gaza correspondent, something the network vehemently denies. was denied on sunday.
Al-Ghamani, Meir Jan, Kozlov and Ziv were kidnapped from the Supernova music festival near Reim on the morning of October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists carried out a brutal attack in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
The army said members of the police’s elite counterterrorism unit, Yamam, along with Shin Bet agents, carried out simultaneous raids on two high-rise buildings in central Nuseirat where four hostages were being held by Hamas-affiliated family members and the terrorist group’s guards.
Hamas official media claimed that at least 274 people were killed in the operation, but this figure also does not distinguish between combatants and civilians and is unconfirmed.
The IDF acknowledged killing Palestinian civilians during the fighting but blamed Hamas for taking hostages and fighting in a crowded civilian environment. “We know of fewer than 100 (Palestinian) casualties. We don’t know how many of those were terrorists,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Saturday.
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