The Israeli army on Wednesday mentioned {that a} February strike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza could have led Hamas militants to execute six hostages.The our bodies of the ones six male hostages had been recovered in past due August. Two days later, the Israel Protection Forces (IDF) mentioned that each one of them were shot, however it would now not definitively say whether or not it was once the reason for loss of life. The slain hostages had been Yoram Metzger, Alexander Dancyg, Avraham Munder, Chaim Peri, Nadav Popplewell, and Yagev Buchshtab.“It’s extremely possible that their deaths had been associated with the strike close to the site the place they had been held,” the army mentioned in a Wednesday observation at the investigation.Talking at a press briefing about an investigation into the hostages’ deaths, an IDF reliable mentioned the Israeli army struck “an apprehension goal” on February 14 in Khan Younis, however didn’t know that hostages had been being held close by. “The investigation didn’t to find anything else incorrect with this assault, within the making plans procedure or the execution,” the reliable mentioned.After a forensic exam and different investigations, the army now believes that “probably the most believable situation” is that the hostages and their guards survived the preliminary results of that strike however that the strike could have led militants to shoot the six hostages. The guards themselves due to this fact died, the army reliable mentioned, from “a secondary impact” of the strike, this sort of loss of oxygen within the tunnel the place they had been dwelling.IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari later raised the opportunity of the aftermath of the strike killing the hostages. He mentioned that whilst the possibly approach the hostages died was once by the hands of militants following the February assault, with the militants then loss of life from “secondary results of the strike,” there have been additionally different conceivable explanations.“Any other chance is that the hostages had been killed through secondary results along side the terrorists and due to this fact shot through different terrorists who arrived later,” he mentioned, including, “a much less possible chance is that the hostages had been killed earlier than the strike.”Hagari mentioned that because of the period of time that handed from when the hostages had been killed to when the forensic assessments came about, “it’s not conceivable to definitively resolve whether or not the hostages had been killed through gunfire or because of publicity to the aftermath of the strike.”“Operational classes from this incident were integrated to attenuate dangers to hostages someday,” he mentioned.
