Hostages in Gaza killed by Israeli military while carrying white flag

The hostages, all of whom were civilians, probably had either escaped or were abandoned by their captors before they tried to make their way toward an Israel Defense Forces position in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya on Friday, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with the rules of the briefing.

They emerged “tens of meters” from where Israeli troops were stationed, he said. “They are all without shirts and they have a stick with a white cloth on it,” the official explained, adding that a soldier “felt threatened” and opened fire.

The deaths have underscored the perilous risks for civilians in Gaza, including Palestinian residents and the more than 100 hostages believed to be still alive inside the territory. They also raise questions about the conduct of Israeli ground forces now operating across much of Gaza, a densely packed enclave where the population is hemmed in and has no safe place to run, the United Nations says.

The United States is among several countries that have publicly urged Israel to scale back its military operations over fears of widespread harm to civilians. The offensive in Gaza has killed more than 18,700 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and the vast majority of residents have been displaced, often multiple times.

The Israeli military official stressed that the incident on Friday broke the IDF’s “rules of engagement,” directives issued to soldiers outlining when, where and how they can use force or enter combat.

The IDF declined to answer questions about the rules. But critics say that the killings fit a pattern of excessive force the IDF has used against Palestinians for years, both in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, including during the current conflict.

Avner Gvaryahu is a former IDF sergeant and director of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli nonprofit that gathers testimony from soldiers who have served in the Palestinian territories. He said Saturday that the risks to civilians come from the rules themselves, not from Israeli troops violating the directives.

Gvaryahu pointed to the military’s tendency to unilaterally declare cities or entire regions combat zones as an example.

“The structural rule that once you drop leaflets and you warn the population, you can treat these areas afterward as free fire zones,” Gvaryahu said, “is part of the reason we’ve seen such high levels of civilian deaths.”

In some of the leaflets the military dropped in Gaza City, it warned any residents who remain that they will be considered “partners” to a terrorist organization, referring to Hamas.

A U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the 2014 war in Gaza criticized the IDF for treating entire neighborhoods like “sterile” combat zones.

“Those civilians choosing not to heed a warning do not lose the protection granted by their status,” the commission wrote. One Israeli soldier who fought in that war told Breaking the Silence that there were no rules of engagement, while another said that the rules were “very, very lax.”

“Most of the rules of engagement are given verbally,” said Gvaryahu. “It’s interpreted by the commander and the low-ranking officer, who add to that their own ideology and real sense of fear.”

The IDF identified the dead hostages as Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz of Kibbutz Kfar Aza and Samer Al-Talalka of Kibbutz Nir Am — all kidnapped on Oct. 7 when Hamas led a shock attack inside Israel, killing at least 1,200 people.

Two of the hostages were killed immediately when the soldier opened fire Friday, the military official said, while one was injured and ran inside a building. As soldiers entered it, “a cry for help” was heard in Hebrew and the battalion commander issued an order to cease fire, the official said. But there was “another burst of fire” and the third hostage was killed.

On Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said at a news conference that “the entire nation of Israel shares in the pain and grieves the loss endured by the families” of the hostages.

“The price of war is a heavy one — we pay it every day,” he said, adding that the military was “willing to keep going” until Hamas was eliminated and the hostages “returned home to their families.”

But the hostage deaths prompted an outpouring of anger among the families of the remaining captives.

Thousands of people, including relatives of some of the people still held in Gaza, assembled for a rally on Saturday where they called for Israel to negotiate for the release of all the hostages.

Lior Peri, the son of Haim Peri, a 79-year-old being held captive, said at the rally that the news of the three hostages killed by IDF soldiers was “highly devastating and extremely hard.”

The only way to bring the hostages home, Peri said, is for the Israeli government to negotiate for their release. The government is not doing that, he said. Instead, it is “prioritizing the war” over freeing the hostages, he said.

“That means a death sentence to my father” and his fellow hostages, Peri said. “Every day there is like a year for them.”

Family members have expressed concern that the campaign — including air and ground assaults — could endanger the hostages held by Hamas and other militant groups, as the whereabouts of many, if not all, of the captives remain unknown.

At an anti-government protest, Eran Etzion, former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council linked the killing of the hostages to inflammatory rhetoric used by members of the most far-right government in Israel’s history.

That can have an “indirect effect and in some cases a direct effect on the behavior of civilians, sometimes of people in police uniform, sometimes on people with IDF uniforms,” he said.

On Saturday, an Al Jazeera journalist who was wounded in a drone strike that also killed his cameraman said the Israeli military had approved their trip to the site that was subsequently struck in the southern city of Khan Younis.

Speaking live on the network, Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh said he and his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, had traveled with civil defense rescuers on Friday to visit a school that had come under attack. Still wearing bandages over his wounds, Dahdouh said that once their position was hit, he could hear Abu Daqqa screaming but could not help him because of his own injuries and returned to the ambulance to raise the alarm.

He was then taken to the Nasser Hospital in central Khan Younis, Dahdouh said. Al Jazeera on Friday blamed the casualties on an Israeli drone strike and said IDF troops prevented rescuers from reaching Abu Daqqa, who was “left to bleed to death for over five hours,” the network said.

The Qatar-based channel said it “holds Israel accountable for systematically targeting and killing Al Jazeera journalists and their families” — a charge the IDF denied.

“The IDF takes all operationally feasible measures to protect both civilians and journalists. The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists,” it said in a statement Saturday.

Mellen reported from Tel Aviv. Bryan Pietsch in Washington, Victoria Bisset in London, Andrew Jeong in Seoul, Miriam Berger in Jerusalem and Itay Stern in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.