Palestinian officials said the IDF’s raid killed seven people, and witnesses reported seeing more than a dozen airstrikes, flares, and Apache helicopter fire,Marman and Har were taken from the Nir Itshak kibbutz on Oct. 7, a day that lives in infamy for Hamas’s brutal massacre in Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed. Israel responded by launching a massive military operation to eradicate Hamas and free the hundreds of hostages that Hamas took from its land.
To rescue the men, the IDF special forces reached a building it had been monitoring in Rafah, got up to the second floor, and blew up the door of the apartment with an explosive, killing the three militants who were holding the two hostages, an IDF spokesperson said,Heavy strikes that the IDF launched in the city were reportedly a diversion so that the special forces team could complete its mission, with intelligence for the operation being gathered over the course of several weeks.