Israel said its forces rescued four hostages alive from a Gaza refugee camp on Saturday as it intensified an assault despite scrutiny over a deadly strike on a UN-run school there.
The four had been kidnapped by the Palestinian militant group Hamas from the Nova music festival during the October 7 attacks that sparked the war, the army said.
Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40, had been “rescued… from two separate locations in the heart of Nuseirat” in a “complex daytime operation”, the military said, adding they were in “good medical condition”.
The military had said, shortly before announcing the rare hostage rescue, that troops were targeting “terrorist infrastructure” around the Nuseirat camp.
A Gaza hospital said heavy Israeli strikes in central areas of the territory, including in Nuseirat camp, killed at least 15 people on Saturday.
Hamas said there were “dozens of bodies of martyrs and wounded lying on the ground, in the streets, and in safe rooms” and accused Israeli forces of engaging in “brutal and savage aggression on Nuseirat camp”.
The assault on Nuseirat came despite growing pressure on Israel after a strike on a UN-run school in the camp on Thursday that a Gaza hospital said had killed 37 people.
The Israeli military acknowledged carrying out the strike on the school, but said it killed 17 “terrorists”.
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees that ran the school, condemned Israel for striking a facility it said had been housing 6,000 displaced people.
In a post on social media platform X, the agency said the “school turned shelter” had been hit “without prior warning”.
Israel accuses Hamas and its allies in Gaza of using civilian infrastructure, including UN-run facilities, as operational centres — charges the militants deny.
The war, now in its ninth month, has brought widespread devastation to Gaza, with one in 20 people dead or wounded, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. Most of Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants are displaced.