Months after bodies recovered, IDF says 3 hostages were killed as ‘byproduct’ of strike
Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer, Elia Toledano were in tunnel network targeted in Israeli airstrike on Hamas brigade commander in November; exact cause of deaths still unknown
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
More than nine months after their bodies were recovered, the Israel Defense Forces said Sunday that an investigation has found that former hostages Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer and civilian Elia Toledano were killed as a result of a “byproduct” of an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, although the exact cause of death was still unknown.
On November 10, 2024, the IDF carried out an airstrike near the location where the bodies were later found, targeting the commander of Hamas’s Northern Gaza Brigade, Ahmed Ghandour, who was hiding in a tunnel in Jabaliya.
“The findings of the investigation suggest that the three, with high probability, were killed by a byproduct of an IDF airstrike, during the assassination” of Ghandour, the IDF said.
“This is a highly probable estimate given all the data, but it is not possible to determine with certainty the circumstances of their death,” the military said. The IDF did not elaborate on what such an airstrike “byproduct” could be, although family members have said it’s likely the three suffocated or were killed by carbon dioxide poisoning inside a tunnel following a strike.
The IDF said it was able to determine that they were likely indirectly killed by the strike on Ghandour based on the locations where their bodies were found in relation to the site of the airstrike, an investigation of the airstrike, intelligence findings, pathology reports and findings made by the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute.
According to the IDF’s investigation, the three had been held in a tunnel complex where Ghandour operated. However, when the strike was carried out, the military had no information on hostages being held in the area.
The IDF probe found that at the time, it had information on another location where it thought the hostages were being held. Therefore the tunnel complex was not listed by the military as an area where Israeli abductees could be.
Nik’s mother, Katy Beizer, said Sunday that they were told by the IDF that troops “didn’t know there were there hostages there… it’s incredible that they didn’t have that intelligence, that they didn’t think that next to Ghandour there would be captives [being used as human shields]. It’s hard for me to understand and believe this.”
Amid the war, the IDF has said it does not strike in areas where it has information of the presence of hostages, but in some cases hostages have been harmed in Israeli strikes due to a lack of intelligence.
On December 14, the bodies of Sherman, Beizer, and Toledano were found by troops in the tunnel network in Jabaliya and brought back to Israel for burial.
A Hamas propaganda video released a week after the three were found showed their bodies and claimed they had been killed in an airstrike.
In January, IDF representatives presented the families with a pathology report showing that the bodies had no signs of trauma or gunfire, indicating that they were not killed directly by an airstrike.
Sherman’s mother told Army Radio last week that, according to the unofficial information the family had heard, the three likely died of carbon dioxide poisoning due to lack of oxygen in the tunnel following the strike.
The soldier’s mother, Ma’ayan, sparred with military officials earlier this year after she placed on Ron’s grave in the Lehavim military cemetery a stone that read in part, “I’m asking forgiveness for the abandonment, your brutal kidnapping, the fact that you were sacrificed for political gain after the biggest failure in the history of the State of Israel which you loved so much” — and Defense Ministry officials removed the stone.
Beizer and Sherman, both 19, served in the COGAT’s Gaza District Coordination and Liaison, a Defense Ministry unit that coordinates permits and the passage of goods through the Erez Crossing into Gaza.
Hamas terrorists seized control of the Erez Crossing on October 7 as they invaded Israeli communities near the Gaza border, massacring some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 others.
Toledano, 28, was kidnapped from the Supernova festival with his close friend, Mia Schem, 21, who was released in late November as part of a temporary truce deal with Hamas.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
