Israeli army officially admits killing of 3 captives in Gaza attack

JERUSALEM (AA) – The Israeli army admitted on Sunday that the three captives whose bodies were discovered last December were killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

The army has officially informed the families of the captives Ron Sherman (a soldier), Nik Beizer (a soldier), and Elia Toledano that they were killed in an airstrike on Gaza, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.

This is the first confirmation from the Israeli army of what the same TV channel reported a few days earlier.

On Monday, Channel 12 reported that the Israeli army was unaware of the presence of the three captives “near a senior Hamas official who was targeted,” resulting in their deaths alongside him.

The channel noted that the Israeli army had known about these details since last February but chose not to release them to the public.

In December, the Israeli army announced that the bodies of three captives had been recovered.

At the time, the Israeli army stated that their bodies were found in a tunnel in Gaza.

According to the broadcaster, “In January, the families of the three captives were informed of the pathological findings, which indicated that the two soldiers and the third captive were in the tunnel where the commander of the northern division in Gaza, Ahmad Ghandour, was killed.”

However, the army refused to acknowledge this information, claiming that the cause of death could not be determined, whether from suffocation or poisoning.

As the families of the slain captives demanded answers, “additional tests were conducted, which clearly revealed that the captives were killed in an Israeli army attack, and it was decided not to release this information.”

However, “senior army officials, including the Chief of Staff (Herzi) Halevi, decided not to make this public,” according to the broadcaster.