Turkey condemned Israel’s operation to free its hostages in the Gaza Strip as a “barbaric attack” and accused Israel of war crimes.
“With this latest barbaric attack, Israel has added a new one to the list of war crimes it has committed in Gaza,” the Foreign Ministry in Ankara said on Sunday, without mentioning the hostage rescue.
On Saturday, the Israeli military released four people kidnapped in Israel during the October 7 massacres. They were found in the center of the Gaza Strip after eight months of captivity.
There were reports of heavy airstrikes and artillery fire accompanying the rescue mission. Television images showed mass casualties and an overwhelmed hospital.
Hamas’ media office said 210 Palestinians were killed and around 400 injured in Nuseirat, one of the locations where the operation took place. The information could not initially be independently verified.
The Israeli army said it was verifying the reports. Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said there were fewer than 100 casualties.
The Hamas-controlled health authority and medical sources in the Gaza Strip previously spoke of 55 deaths.
Meanwhile, in Israel, families whose loved ones were killed by Hamas or who remain in captivity in Gaza criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for meeting with freed hostages but not families of other victims.
A prominent opposition politician joined the criticism.
“When you are prime minister, you are the prime minister of successes and defeats,” opposition leader Yair Lapid told Israel’s Kan channel on Sunday. “Being prime minister only when everything goes right and disappearing when everything doesn’t go the way we want, that’s pathetic.”
Netanyahu met four hostages released from the Gaza Strip at the hospital on Saturday – during the Sabbath or Jewish day of rest – and had their photo taken.
However, according to media reports, the families of the Israelis killed during the Hamas massacre on October 7 and the families of the dead hostages were angry that neither Netanyahu nor other government representatives had made contact with them. .
“A prime minister with moral values would have called to comfort and strengthen (us). And to apologize for what happened under his command,” the father of a soldier killed on October 7 wrote in X.
Asked about his opinion of Netanyahu, the father said: “I despise him, a petty person.”
