Hamas propaganda has repeatedly accused the IAF of killing hostages during the 14-month-long aerial assault on the Gaza terrorist group.
By JNS
Hamas terrorists likely executed the six Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered from southern Gaza on Aug. 20, the Israel Defense Forces said on Wednesday following a comprehensive probe.
While the military said it was not possible to determine with absolute certainty how Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Yoram Metzger, Avraham Munder, Haim Peri and Nadav Popplewell were killed, their bodies were found with gunshot wounds, unlike their six guards, who are believed to have died in an Israeli Air Force strike in the area.
The army probe noted that investigators were unable to conclude when the hostages were shot—before the strike, during it, or after it. However, the IDF believes the six men would not have survived the airstrike regardless.
At the time of the Feb. 14 IAF strike, Jerusalem “had no information, not even a suspicion, that the hostages were in the underground compound or its vicinity,” according to the statement, which stressed that the strike would have been called off “had such information been available.”
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi presented the final findings of the investigation to the families of the slain hostages on Wednesday.
“In this prolonged war, which began on a very difficult day, the mission of returning the hostages alive accompanies us at every moment,” said Halevi. “The IDF is confident that the combat advances their return, but in the context of combat we have also made mistakes.”
Following the death of the six captives, it was decided that any airstrike meeting “specific criteria” must be preapproved by the IDF Intelligence Directorate’s Headquarters of the Hostages and Missing Persons.
Hamas propaganda has repeatedly accused the IAF of killing hostages during the 14-month-long aerial assault on the Gaza terrorist group.
Immediately after the six corpses were recovered from the Hamas tunnel over the summer, their families were informed that bullet fragments were discovered in at least some of their remains.
The IDF had determined the deaths of five of the captives several weeks earlier, with only Munder presumed alive until the retrieval operation.
At the time, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant hailed the recovery of the hostages’ bodies as a “daring and dangerous operation in the Hamas tunnels in Khan Yunis.”
And on Aug. 31, Israeli forces in Rafah discovered the bodies of slain hostages Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, Eden Yerushalmi and IDF Master Sgt. Ori Danino.
According to examinations conducted by the L. Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv, the six were shot by their captors multiple times at close range days before their bodies’ discovery, indicating that hostages was executed as Israeli forces closed in on their underground location.
Reuters cited an internal Hamas document on Wednesday evening as saying that the terrorist group had indications that the IDF was planning the rescue of multiple hostages, similar to the raid that freed Noa Argamani, Andrey Kozlov, Almog Meir Jan and Shlomi Ziv in June.
The confidential document, dated Nov. 22, tells terrorist operatives to execute hostages if such an operation takes place and “not to consider any repercussions of following the instructions.”
Jerusalem believes that 97 of the 251 hostages taken during the Oct. 7, 2023 assault remain in Gaza after 425 days. Hamas is also holding two civilians who entered Gaza in 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed during “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014.
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