IDF says it mistakenly killed 3 hostages: 'Unbearable tragedy,' Netanyahu says

The Israeli military accidentally killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza who had been taken captive by Hamas on Oct. 7. IDF soldiers identified the hostages as threatening, the Israel Defense Forces said on Friday.

"During combat in Shejaiya, the IDF mistakenly identified 3 Israeli hostages as a threat and as a result, fired toward them and the hostages were killed," the military said.

The hostages were Yotam Haim, Samer Talalka and Alon Shamriz, the IDF said in a statement.

"This is a difficult and unbearable tragedy," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on social media in Hebrew. "The entire State of Israel will mourn this evening. My heart is with the grieving families during this difficult time."

IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military encountered the hostages on Friday and it wasn't clear if they had escaped or been abandoned by Hamas captors. The Israeli military said the incident happened in an active combat zone where fighting had been ongoing in recent days.

"Even in this difficult evening we will tend to our wounds, we will learn our lesson and persevere through maximum effort to bring all our hostages home safely," Netanyahu said.

The IDF said officials had learned from the incident and shared "lessons" with troops.

"The IDF expresses deep remorse over the tragic incident and sends the families its heartfelt condolences. Our national mission is to locate the missing and return all the hostages home," it said.

John Kirby, a White House spokesman on national security matters, called the deaths of the three hostages “heartbreaking.” He said President Joe Biden was briefed on the raid but has not spoken to Netanyahu about it.

The U.S. doesn’t have many specific details on how the operation unfolded and how the accident happened, Kirby said, adding he expects the Israelis to investigate. Asked what the killing of the hostages says about Israel’s ability to carry out precise strikes, Kirby said, “I don’t think that we can necessarily make some sort of broad judgment about the specific circumstances here.”

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv after the IDF’s announcement, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. The demonstrators waved signs with names and pictures of hostages and called for their immediate release.

Hamas' attack that prompted the war killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the militant group took about 240 hostages. About half of them remain in Gaza more than two months later.

More than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed since the war broke out over two months ago, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas.

Meanwhile, world leaders have been urging Israel to do more to protect civilians as it conducts ground operations in Gaza in an attempt to eradicate Hamas. A top U.S. official met with the Palestinian Authority on Friday as the Biden administration looks toward the future of the Palestinian territories after the war.

Latest developments:

◾ Al Jazeera said on Friday that its cameraperson Samer Abudaqa was killed and Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh was injured in a drone attack in the southern city of Khan Younis. Both were hit by shrapnel, Al Jazeera said. Dahdouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike in October.

◾ Israeli military forces recovered the bodies of two of its soldiers who were taken hostage on Oct. 7, according to a statement from the military on Friday.

◾ Israel believes 20 of the 132 hostages in Gaza are dead, according to a report from CNN, which cited Netanyahu’s office.

◾ The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 135 colleagues have been killed in the war – more than all aid workers killed in 2022 – according to the Aid Worker Security Database, which recorded 116 fatalities last year.

Top White House official meets with Palestinian Authority

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reiterated calls for a two-state solution during his meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah Friday, the White House said. Biden has said the governing body should preside over Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war.

The White House said they also discussed measures to counter extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, increase humanitarian aid for Gaza and the importance of protecting civilians. The U.S. official expressed his sympathies for Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.

Sullivan met Thursday with Netanyahu and other officials to discuss the timeline of the war and the conditions under which military operations in Gaza will wind down the heavy combat that's drawn international outrage and isolated Israel and the U.S. amid global calls for a cease-fire.

Earlier this week, Biden said Israel is "starting to lose" international support in its war against Hamas because of its "indiscriminate bombing" in Gaza. And on Thursday, the president said he wanted Israel "to be focused on how to save civilian lives ... not stop going after Hamas but be more careful."

Sullivan did not reveal the timeline for when Israel plans to slow its intensive military operations in Gaza, which continued on Friday amid a communication blackout that, for at least the fourth time since the start of the war, cut the enclave off from the rest of the world. Sullivan said Israeli officials have expressed intentions to reduce the number of civilian casualties in Gaza.

"We want to see the results match up to that," Sullivan said in Jerusalem before leaving for the West Bank to meet with leaders of the Palestinian Authority. He later added that Israeli officials "very much indicated that their goal is to try to distinguish between innocent Palestinians and Hamas as we go forward."

Israel to open crossing into Gaza for aid delivery

The Israeli government has approved the opening of a border crossing into Gaza to allow aid to enter the besieged territory. This would be the first time aid has been permitted to cross into Gaza from Israel since Oct. 7.

Netanyahu's office said Friday that the country's security cabinet approved the opening of the Karem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza, and officials expect it to increase the amount of aid delivered to Gaza each day. Earlier this week Israeli officials began inspecting aid trucks at the crossing, but they have not yet allowed aid to directly cross into Gaza.

The news is a departure from Israel's previous policy of prohibiting aid from crossing directly into Gaza following the Hamas attack that triggered the war. Since the attack, aid trucks were only allowed to cross into Gaza through the small Rafah border crossing, from Egypt.

International humanitarian organizations have sounded the alarm, saying Palestinians in Gaza are desperate for humanitarian aid, including food, medical supplies and fuel. Many groups have said the amount of aid entering through the Rafah crossing has been insufficient to meet dire needs.

“We hope that this new opening will ease congestion and help facilitate the delivery of life-saving assistance to those who need it urgently in Gaza,” Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said in response to the news.

Senators call on Biden to urge for press freedom in Gaza

Five Democratic senators – Peter Welch, Brian Schatz, Chris Van Hollen, Tim Kaine and Cory Booker – called on Biden in a joint letter Friday to urge Israel and Egypt to allow journalists into Gaza and stressed the importance of their safety.

“We ask you to further urge the Israeli government, as well as the Egyptian government, to respect press freedom by allowing all interested journalists to report without restriction from Gaza, with the exception of operational security requirements for embedded journalists and provide journalists with the appropriate protections to carry out their essential work,” the senators said.

They noted more than 2,000 international journalists have gone to Israel since Oct. 7, citing the Israeli government, but only a small number have been allowed into Gaza as part of a tour organized by the IDF.

"American democracy rests on a bedrock commitment to a free press and we must insist on the same from others, including our closest allies and partners," the senators wrote. "The principles for which the United States advocates send strong messages to foreign governments and help establish essential international norms.”

As of Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said 64 journalists and media workers have been killed in the war, including 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists. Three others were missing, and 19 have been arrested, the nonprofit agency said, with additional reports of assaults, censorship, threats and killing of family members.

Israel opens probe after human rights group decries 2 killings in West Bank

Israel on Friday said it was opening a military police investigation into the killing of two Palestinians in the West Bank after an Israeli human rights group posted videos that appeared to show Israeli troops killing the men – one who was incapacitated and the other unarmed – during a raid on a refugee camp.

The B’Tselem human rights group accused the army of carrying out a pair of “illegal executions.”

Security footage shows two Israeli military vehicles pursuing a group of Palestinians in the Faraa refugee camp. One man, who appears to be holding a red canister, is gunned down by soldiers. Another is subsequently fatally shot.

The military police unit opened an investigation into the Dec. 8 shootings “on the suspicion that during the incident, shots were fired not in accordance with the law,” the Israeli military said.

Israel rarely prosecutes such cases, and human rights groups say soldiers rarely receive serious punishments even if wrongdoing is found, according to the Associated Press. In a high-profile case, an Israeli soldier was convicted of manslaughter and served a reduced nine-month sentence in jail after shooting a badly wounded Palestinian who was lying on the ground in 2016.

Sullivan seeks to calm Israel-Lebanon tension

On Friday, Sullivan said the threat of Hezbollah, which has been attacking Israeli military posts along the border of Lebanon since the start of the war, "can be dealt with through diplomacy" and does not "require the launching of a new war."

He reiterated the importance of "deterrence" in preventing the spread of the conflict and said the U.S. "will not tolerate the kinds of threats and terrorist activity that we have seen from Hezbollah and from the territory of Lebanon."

In talks with Israeli leaders this week, Sullivan said he advocated for a "negotiated outcome" to, in part, reassure citizens in northern Israel that they will not fall victim to an attack from across the border of Lebanon.

More than 20,000 citizens living in towns and villages in northern Israel have been evacuated since the start of the war.

War will last 'more than several months,' Israel official says

Israel's defense minister acknowledged Thursday that defeating Hamas will take a considerable amount of time, which is a scarce commodity when international pressure to halt the war continues to build.

Yoav Gallant pointed out Hamas has been assembling a military infrastructure in Gaza for more than a decade, “and it is not easy to destroy them. It will require a period of time. ... It will last more than several months, but we will win and we will destroy them.”

The U.N. General Assembly called for a cease-fire in an overwhelming, though nonbinding, vote this week, and even Israel's most steadfast ally, the U.S., is strongly signaling the need for less carnage in Gaza.

Pentagon extends US aircraft carrier deployment near Israel

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and one other warship to remain in the Mediterranean Sea for several more weeks to maintain a two-carrier presence near Israel, U.S. officials said.

It is the third time the Ford’s deployment has been extended. The Ford’s roughly 5,000 sailors have been waiting for a Pentagon decision on whether they would get to be home for the holidays. The ship left Norfolk, Virginia in early May to deploy to U.S. European Command, and under its original schedule it would have been back by early November.

The U.S. has two aircraft carriers in the region, a rarity in recent years.

The Pentagon ramped up its military presence in the region since Oct. 7. As of Friday, there were 19 U.S. warships in the region, including seven in the eastern Mediterranean and 12 more stretched down the Red Sea, across the Arabian Sea and into the Persian Gulf. U.S. warships in the Red Sea have intercepted missiles fired toward Israel from areas of Yemen controlled by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

UN official: 'Half of the population are starving'

Carl Skau, the deputy executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, on Thursday said that in Gaza, "half of the population are starving."

Skau said the trickle of humanitarian aid has slowed since Israel's military operations spread into southern Gaza, where the majority of civilians are seeking refuge.

“The grim reality is also that nine out of 10 people are not eating enough, are not eating every day and don’t know where their next meal is coming from," he said, adding that people are becoming increasingly desperate.

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, on Thursday said, “I saw it with my eyes that people in Rafah have started to decide to help themselves directly from the truck out of total despair and eat what they have taken out of the truck on the spot."

Lazzarini said more than one million people have sought shelter in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza near the Egyptian border. He called it the "epicenter of displacement."

Contributing: John Bacon, Jorge L. Ortiz, Joey Garrison, USA TODAY; The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Israel-Hamas war updates: IDF mistakenly kills 3 hostages