Israel admits shooting three hostages after mistaking them for Hamas fighters

They were identified as three young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities – Yotam Haim (right) Samer Al-Talalka (left) and Alon Shamriz (centre) (Pictures: Reuters)

Israel’s army has said troops accidentally shot dead three hostages after ‘mistaking’ them for Hamas terrorists during fighting in Gaza.

The IDF’s chief spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said soldiers wrongly identified the Israeli captives as a threat and opened fire on them.

They were identified as three young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities near the Gaza border – Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Al-Talalka, 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26.

Prime Minister Benjanmin Netanyahu called their deaths an ‘unbearable tragedy’ and vowed to continue ‘with a supreme effort to return all the hostages home safely’.

The deaths underscored the ferocity of Israel’s two-month-old onslaught in Gaza, as a US envoy was trying to persuade the Israelis to scale back their campaign sooner rather than later.

It is unclear whether the three hostages had escaped or were abandoned.

‘Perhaps in the last few days, or over the past day, we still don’t know all the details, they reached this area,’ Mr Hagari said.

He added that the army expressed ‘deep sorrow’ and was investigating.

Samer Fouad Al-Talalka was taken hostage during the October 7 attack (Picture: Reuters)

Yotam Haim was also killed (Picture: Reuters)

The third hostage was Alon Lulu Shamriz (Picture: Reuters)

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari speaks to the press from The Kirya, which houses the Israeli Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

Elsewhere, in southern Gaza the Al Jazeera television network said an Israeli strike on Friday in the city of Khan Younis killed cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa and wounded its chief correspondent in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh.

The two were reporting at a school that had been hit by an earlier airstrike when a drone launched a second strike, the network said.

Speaking from a hospital bed, Mr Dahdouh told the network that he managed to walk to an ambulance. But Mr Abu Daqqa lay bleeding in the school and died hours later.

An ambulance tried to reach the school to evacuate him but had to turn back because roads were blocked by the rubble of destroyed houses, it said.

Mr Dahdouh, a veteran of covering Israel-Gaza wars whose wife and children were killed by an Israeli strike earlier in the war, was wounded by shrapnel in his right arm.

Before Mr Abu Daqqa’s death, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported at least 63 journalists killed in the war, including 56 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.

Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas (Picture: Reuters)

Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes on a building in Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighborhood (Picture: AP)

Israel’s offensive, triggered by the unprecedented October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes.

Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south in a spiralling humanitarian crisis.

It has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.

Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Its latest count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead in previous tallies.

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Prime Minister Benjanmin Netanyahu called their deaths an ‘unbearable tragedy’.