Jerusalem — The Israeli military said Tuesday it has rescued one of the scores of people abducted in the October 7 Hamas attack that ignited the ongoing attack. the war in Gaza. The military said Qaid Farhan Alkadi was rescued “in a complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip”. It gave no further details.
The 52-year-old is from Israel’s Arab Bedouin minority and worked as a guard at a packaging factory in Kibbutz Magen, one of several farming communities attacked on October 7. He has two wives and is the father of 11 children.
Israel’s Channel 12 showed Alkadi’s family members sprinting through the hospital where he was taken after they got the news.
Hamas-led militants abducted around 250 people in the October 7 attack, in which around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-ruled territory, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The war has driven 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes and caused widespread destruction across the besieged territory.
Hamas is still holding around 110 hostages, about a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the rest were released in exchange for Palestinians jailed by Israel during a ceasefire last November.
Israel has rescued a total of eight hostages, including in two operations that killed scores of Palestinians. Hamas says several hostages have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and failed rescue attempts.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have spent months trying to negotiate a deal in which the remaining hostages would be released in exchange for a lasting ceasefire. The latest round of these callsover the weekend in Cairo, appeared to have made little progress, but Israel said it remained committed to the dialogue.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced intense criticism from the families of the hostages and much of the Israeli public for not yet reaching an agreement with Hamas to bring them home.