The captives were killed in battles with Palestinian fighters after being wrongly identified as a threat.
The Israeli army killed three captives held by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza after “mistakenly” identifying them as a threat, according to Israeli military officials.
The army said Friday that the captives were killed during fighting with Palestinian groups in Gaza and expressed condolences to the families while saying there would be “full transparency” in the investigation into the incident, which is “under review”.
“During the fighting in Shujayea, (the Israeli army) mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat. As a result, troops fired on them and they were killed,” the army said in a statement.
“The (Israeli Army) immediately began looking into the incident… Immediate lessons were learned from the event, which were passed on to all (Israeli Army) troops on the ground,” he said. -he added, expressing “deep remorse over this tragic incident”. .
The hostages were identified as three young men who were kidnapped from Israeli communities during the Hamas attack on October 7: Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Al-Talalka, 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26.
Chief army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops found the hostages and wrongly identified them as a threat. He said the three men were believed to have fled their captors or been abandoned.
Israeli troops have engaged in heavy fighting with Palestinian fighters in the area in recent days.
Around 250 prisoners were taken to Gaza by Palestinian groups during the October 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed around 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, most of them women and children. Thousands more are missing and trapped under the rubble.
The Israeli government has repeatedly stated that the repatriation of all hostages is one of its main war goals.
So far, 110 of the captives have been freed, most during a seven-day truce last month, in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Israel also repatriated eight bodies, including on Friday those of Elia Toledano, 28, a dual Israeli-French national, kidnapped during an electronic music festival, and two 19-year-old soldiers.
The deaths came as U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States and Israel were discussing a timetable for scaling back the offensive against Hamas, even though they agree that the overall fight will take months.
Sullivan also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the post-war future of the besieged enclave.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support to Israel with arms deliveries and diplomatic support.
Israeli airstrikes and shelling continued Friday, notably in the southern town of Rafah, part of the dwindling areas of the small, densely populated Gaza Strip to which Israel had asked Palestinian civilians to evacuate.