“It was on a scale like Entebbe,” according to the IDF’s Chief Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari referencing Israel’s rescue of 100 hostages in Uganda in 1976.
Acting on intelligence, and after crossing into Gaza from Israel, he said specialist commandos simultaneously raided two residential apartments in Nuseirat where the hostages were being held.
In one apartment was 26-year-old hostage Noa Argamani. In the other were 41-year-old Shlomi Ziv, 27-year-old Andrey Kozlov and Almog Meir Jan, 22.
Mr Hagari said they were not in cages but in locked rooms surrounded by guards.
He said Israeli commandos, having forced their way in, seized the hostages wrapping themselves around them to provide protective shields before bundling them into military vehicles outside.
As they left he said they faced fierce resistance from Palestinian fighters.
Mr Hagari said Israel’s military had planned the raid in great detail, even building mock-ups of the two apartments to train in.
Mobile phone video from the scene shows people diving for cover as missiles whistled in and gunfire rang out.
Later footage showed bodies strewn in the street.
