Body camera footage has been released by Israel police showing last week’s operation to rescue hostages held by the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza.
Four captives, inducing Andrey Kozlov, who holds both Russian and Israeli citizenship, were freed as a result of the raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza early on Saturday. Palestinian authorities said the Israeli operation caused massive civilian casualties.
On Monday, Israel police uploaded a video on X (formerly Twitter) from the helmet camera of one of the operatives, showing the raid – which involved YAMAM (Israel Police National Counterterrorism Unit) and members of other security agencies.
In the clip, special forces can be seen engaging in a gunfight before breaking into a home and discovering the hostages. Kozlov is heard in the video identifying himself, saying his name is “Andrey.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Saturday that its jets carried out airstrikes targeting “terror infrastructure” in the area of the Nuseirat refugee camp. Several hours later, the IDF said a team of police and military commandos had rescued four hostages from Hamas captivity, taking heavy fire on the way in and out of the camp. One Israeli counterterrorism officer was wounded during the raid, and later died of his injuries.
The Gaza health ministry has said 274 people, including many women and children, were killed in the IDF assault on Nuseirat and the surrounding area. It is unclear how many of those were Hamas fighters and how many were civilians.
The rescued hostages had been held since October 7 last year, when Hamas launched a surprise cross-border attack on Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 kidnapped. Since then, at least 37,164 Palestinians have been killed and more than 84,832 wounded in Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive in Gaza, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry.