The Gaza City incident in february 2005: Israeli soldiers and civilians felt responsible for the incident, and a commander allegedly shot and killed two soldiers

The hostages are believed to have fled to another building more than half a mile away. A day before they were killed, the military identified signs saying “SOS” and “Help, 3 hostages” in the area. However, the military also spotted blue barrels that Hamas has used to hold explosives and suspected a trap.

The whole chain of command feels responsible for the event, regrets the outcome, and grieves for the families of the hostages who were killed, he said. It was done under complex circumstances and under intense combat conditions.

In a statement included in the report on Thursday, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Brig. Halevi said the military’s mission to rescue the hostages was a failure.

Soldiers in a different location saw a figure emerge from the building. They had not heard the orders to hold fire because of noise from a nearby tank, and they shot and killed him. He was identified later as Yotam Haim.

The commanding officers ordered the troops to hold fire so they could identify the third man, who had fled inside of a building. In Hebrew, he is referring to “Save me!” They were heard saying they were shooting at me. The officers repeated their orders to the troops to hold their fire and, after about 15 minutes, yelled toward the voice, “Come toward us.”

There was a structure that obscured the line of sight for the lookout soldier who killed the first two hostages, and he may have not seen their white flag.

There are only official Israeli military statements in the narrative. The hostages and Hamas militants involved are dead, and Israeli soldiers are prohibited from speaking publicly.

New details released by the Israeli military about the accidental killing of three Israeli hostages in Gaza City include that there was a gap of 15 minutes between the fatal shootings of the first two hostages and the third and that a commander had urged the third hostage to come out of hiding just before he was fatally shot.

In another instance widely covered in the Israeli media, Hamas fired on an Israeli helicopter, forcing it down near Gaza. The helicopter burst into flames, but the parachutists dodged injury.

Hamas was successful in decreasing Israel’s advantage in firepower. Terrorists targeted Israeli tanks, hitting several of them, said Brig. The commander of the armored corps is Hisham Ibrahim. Tanks ran out of ammunition, leaving crews to fight with ground soldiers.

And just as the civilian volunteers had warned, the first line of defense inside Israel was quickly overwhelmed. Some units did not have enough weapons to battle for hours.

Whether Hamas knew that the military was understaffed is unclear, but it had fatal consequences. Many soldiers were fighting for their lives when the attacks began, and they were not protecting the residents nearby. Soldiers were forced to abandon Nahal Oz by Hamas because of dead friends.

That left three infantry battalions and one tank battalion along Gaza’s border. The Jewish holidays of Simchat Torah and the Sabbath took place on October 7. One senior military officer estimated that about half the 1,500 soldiers in the area were away. He said that another infantry battalion was assigned after Israel finished building a security wall around Gaza.

The military has admitted that it moved more than 100 soldiers to the West Bank just days before the attack in a reflection of the mistaken belief Israel had of a Hamas attack.

The situation was so dire that at 9 a.m., the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, issued a rare order. He told all combat-trained, weapons-carrying employees to go south. Shin Bet does not usually act with the military. Ten Shin Bet operatives were killed that day.

Yair Ansbacher, who fought on Oct. 7, said that the terrorists had a tactical advantage. He said that he and his colleagues used pistols, assault rifles, and sometimes sniper rifles.

Hamas fighters poured into Israel with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, land mines and more. They were prepared for a long fight. The Israelis believed they would be fighting for hours; one said he didn’t have night vision goggles.

The small size of the teams suggested that commanders were too focused on the threat. troops used assault rifles and pistols to face off against a group of hostages but not a full-scale battle

Commando units were among the first to mobilize that morning. Some of them rushed into the fight after they received messages asking for help.

When Barak Hiram was about to become the new commanding officer of a division along the Gaza border, he took a trip to see how soldiers responded to a Hamas attack.

Israel’s senior military leadership in Tel Aviv and when orders were given remain a mystery. The Israeli media of the military response got a lot more details from the Times investigation.

The battalion has been prepared for combat in 24 hours, he said. A list of things to authorize the distribution of. We practiced this for many years.”

Davidi Ben Zion, 38, a major in the reserves, said reservists never trained to respond at a moment’s notice to an invasion. The training assumed that Israeli intelligence would be aware of the upcoming attack in advance and that the soldiers would have time to prepare.

The Civilian Guard, known as Kitat Konnenut, was decided to serve as the first line of defense in the towns and villages near the border. The standards of training for guardsmen were different depending on who was in charge. For years, they warned that some of their units were poorly trained and underequipped, according to two Israeli military officials with direct knowledge of the volunteer teams.