Shawdesh desk:

Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that at least 37,084 people have been killed in the territory during more than eight months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

It said the toll includes at least 274 deaths in Saturday’s Israeli raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp in which four hostages were rescued alive, a figure impossible to independently verify.

The ministry said the Nuseirat fatalities included at least 64 children and teenagers, 57 women and 37 elderly people.

Another 698 people were wounded during the operation, the ministry said, including 153 children, 161 women and 54 elderly Palestinians.

Israel said one police officer was mortally wounded in the fighting.

The health ministry also said that at least 84,494 Gazans have been wounded in the war since it broke out on October 7.

The Israeli military said the extraction team and captives came under heavy gun and grenade fire, which killed one police officer, while Israel’s air force launched strikes that reduced nearby buildings to rubble.

‘My child was crying, afraid of the sound of the plane firing at us,’ said one Gaza woman, Hadeel Radwan, 32, recounting how they fled the intense combat as she carried her seven-month-old daughter.

‘We all felt that we wouldn’t survive,’ she said, condemning ‘this brutal occupation that will not let us live’.

Many Israelis shed tears of joy when they heard of the release of the four captives, all reported in good health — Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41.

The four had been abducted from the Nova music festival during Hamas’s October 7 attack when video footage showed gunmen taking away Argamani on a motorbike as she cried ‘Don’t kill me!’

The army released footage of the freed captives embracing their family members, and the government press office showed prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting them in hospital.

Israel’s leading dailies, Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom, showed Argamani embraced by her father on their front pages under the same simple headline: ‘Home’.

Financial newspaper Calcalist hailed a ‘heroic operation’ that had given Israelis ‘a few hours of grace’, while the left-leaning Haaretz daily called the rescue operation a ‘morale boost’ for the nation.

Hamas’s Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades claimed that other hostages were killed during the rescue operation, without providing details or proof, and warned that conditions would worsen for the remaining captives.

‘The operation will pose a great danger for the enemy’s prisoners and will have a negative impact on their conditions,’ spokesman Abu Obaida wrote on the Telegram channel.

Israel’s top diplomat rejected unspecified accusations ‘of war crimes’ in the operation.

‘We will continue to act with determination and strength, in accordance with our right to self-defence, until all of the hostages are freed and Hamas is defeated,’ foreign minister Israel Katz said.

Latest fighting saw four members of one family killed when an air strike hit their house in Gaza City’s Al-Daraj area, according to Al-Ahli hospital medics.

Israel helicopters were also firing east of the Bureij camp, witnesses said.

And heavy artillery shelling from Israeli army tanks hit central and northern areas of Rafah, said officials in the southern city.

The four freed hostages are among only seven that Israeli forces have managed to rescue alive since Palestinian militants seized 251 in their October 7 attack.

Dozens were exchanged in a November truce for Palestinian prisoners. After Saturday’s rescue operation, 116 hostages remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 of them are dead.

US president Joe Biden, French president Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were among leaders who greeting their release even as they have also called for a truce.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell welcomed the hostage release and said reports ‘of another massacre of civilians are appalling the bloodbath must end immediately’.

Biden on May 31 launched a new push for a ceasefire and hostage release deal involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, but without any tangible results so far.

Hamas has insisted on a permanent truce and full Israeli withdrawal from all parts of Gaza — demands that Israel has firmly rejected.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken will visit the Middle East from Monday for his eighth regional tour since the October 7 attack, with stops planned in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar.

Blinken on Saturday insisted that ‘the only thing standing in the way of achieving this ceasefire is Hamas. It is time for them to accept the deal.’