A terrified Noa Argamani desperately clawed at the air, reaching out for her boyfriend as Hamas terrorists swept her from Israel into Gaza on the back of a speeding motorbike.“Don’t kill me!” the 26-year-old student screamed, terror etched across her face.
Israelis danced on the streets and cheered on the beaches of Tel Aviv to celebrate the successful daytime raid which rescued four captives – Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41.With the command “go!” from the Israel military’s chief of staff, the audacious rescue began at 11am on Saturday .
The “high-risk” rescue was made more complex by the “cruel and cynical” decision to embed them within the dense civilian population in flats occupied by families, IDF spokesman Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a post-operative media briefing. But a fierce shoot-out took place in the apartment holding the three men. In the crossfire, Arnon Zmora, 36, the commander of an elite police squad and a married father of two, was killed.
Amid the intense extraction, the Israeli Air Force also conducted heavy air strikes on pre-planned Hamas targets in Nuseirat. None of the Israeli hostages was injured during the rescue. Grainy footage shows Argamani being led across a beach into a waiting helicopter, followed by the three men in a second helicopter.Friends of Almog Meir celebrate outside the Sheba Medical Centre after he was rescued.All four hostages were transported to Israel’s Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv for a physical check-up and to be reunited with their relieved and overjoyed families.
“Thank you very much, thousands of thanks, to each and every one who had a hand in this matter,” he said. “Noa is fine, thank God, she looks wonderful, looks excellent.”
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