IDF probe said to find troops who killed hostages weren’t briefed on Hebrew sign in area
TV report says probe into tragic deaths of Alon Shamriz, Samar Talalka and Yotam Haim focusing on fatal shooting of the latter, who a soldier shot after commander said to hold fire
An Israeli television report on Tuesday revealed new details about the IDF’s probe into the mistaken killing of three hostages last weekend, including that troops were not informed of signs indicating the captives may have been in the area.
The three hostages, Yotam Haim, Samar Talalka, and Alon Shamriz, were kidnapped by Hamas during the terror group’s onslaught on southern Israel on October 7. They had managed to escape Hamas captivity before they were mistakenly shot dead by troops on Friday morning in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood.
Following the incident, the Israel Defense Forces revealed photos showing signs apparently left behind by the three hostages, which read “SOS” and, in Hebrew, “Help, 3 hostages.” The signs were written on fabric using leftover food.
The building with the signs, located a few hundred meters away from the tragic incident, was discovered by troops days earlier, but initially dismissed as potentially boobytrapped by Hamas, as the terror group had recently attempted to lure soldiers into traps in the area.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, the IDF battalion that was on duty during the incident was not briefed by the unit it was replacing about the latter group’s spotting of the nearby sign that read “Help, 3 hostages.”
Moreover, the probe reportedly determined that the IDF sharpshooter who shot dead Shamriz and Talalka did not recognize the white cloth they were carrying. In the briefing he received upon starting his shift, the soldier was told that the entire area was a combat zone and he was allowed to open fire at anyone suspicious.
The report said the probe was focusing on the killing of Haim, which was found to be particularly egregious since he managed to flee back into a nearby building after being shot with Shamriz and Talalka.
The battalion commander then shouted at the soldiers to hold their fire, but one of them proceeded to shoot and kill Haim after he reappeared from the building a second time.
An initial IDF probe into the incident found that the soldier who opened fire upon misidentifying the three men as terrorists did so against protocols, as did the soldier who killed Haim, according to a senior officer in the Southern Command.
Still, the IDF understood that conditions in the field were a factor in the soldiers’ actions; the senior officer said the military had not identified any Palestinian civilians in Shejaiya in recent days. The scenario itself, of hostages walking around in a battle zone, had not been taken into account by the IDF.
Immediately following the incident, the IDF sent new protocols to ground troops for the possibility of more hostages managing to flee captivity.
“You see two people, they have their hands up and no shirts — take two seconds,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told soldiers in Gaza on Sunday. Halevi said a day earlier that the soldiers who shot the three had opened fire in breach of IDF protocols.
“And I want to tell you something no less important,” Halevi continued. “What if it is two Gazans with a white flag who come out to surrender? Do we shoot at them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.”
“Even those who fought and now put down their weapons and raise their hands — we capture them, we don’t shoot them. We extract a lot of intelligence from the prisoners we have; we have over 1,000 already,” he told the soldiers.
Halevi added: “We don’t shoot them, because the IDF doesn’t shoot a person who raises his hands. This is a strength, not a weakness.”
He told the soldiers that he was not speaking in order “to say whether [the soldiers who mistakenly opened fire on the captives] were right or wrong, but so that we will be right going forward.”
The IDF chief also said “hopefully, we will have another opportunity where captives will come to us or we will reach a house, and do the right thing.”
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
