The Israel Defense Forces announced on Friday that troops operating in Gaza had recovered the bodies of two soldiers and one civilian hostage who were taken captive by Hamas terrorists on October 7.
The soldiers were named as Cpl. Nik Beizer, 19, and Sgt. Ron Sherman, 19. The civilian was identified as Elia Toledano, a 28-year-old French-Israeli citizen.
Beizer began his army service on April 30, and on October 7 was taken captive by Hamas terrorists when they launched an assault on his base near the Erez Crossing. He was working at the IDF’s Gaza District Coordination and Liaison, which coordinates permits and the passage of goods through the Erez Crossing into Gaza.
“That’s the irony,” Beizer’s mother Katy Beizer had said previously. “Everyone at this base is taking care of the Palestinians, working so that Gazans can live their lives.”
Beizer wasn’t supposed to be at the base that weekend but had swapped shifts with a friend who wanted the weekend off.
Sherman last spoke to his mother on the morning of October 7, when his army base was attacked by Hamas terrorists.
“They got cut off,” Shalhev Kimchi, his aunt, said previously in a video made by Bring Them Home, the organization helping tell the stories of those who went missing in the Hamas terror onslaught.
When Sherman’s phone call with his mother was cut off, he switched to WhatsApp text messages.
“He told her he loves her,” said his aunt. “That’s it, Mom, they’re here, it’s over, I love you.”
However, some four or five hours later, said Kimchi, they found Hamas videos of Sherman, “whole and healthy,” she said, but bound in the back of a pickup truck.
Toledano, the civilian hostage whose body was recovered, had been taken by terrorists from the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, where more than 360 people were killed.
His body was retrieved from Gaza during operational activity carried out by the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504, and the 551st Brigade.
After his body was brought back to Israel, it was identified by medical and rabbinical authorities and his family was notified. No details as to his cause of death were immediately provided.
In a statement posted on X, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said her country is “deeply saddened to hear the Israeli armed forces announce the death of our compatriot Elia Toledano, a Hamas hostage whose body was found in Gaza.”
“We share the grief of his family and loved ones. The release of all hostages is our priority,” she added.
The IDF, meanwhile, announced the deaths of two more soldier in fighting in Gaza on Thursday and Friday, pushing the toll of fallen troops in the ground offensive against Hamas to 118.
Sgt. Oz Shmuel Aradi, a 19-year-old soldier with the Combat Engineering Corps’ 603rd Battalion, from Kibbutz Hatzor near Ashdod, was killed in action in southern Gaza yesterday.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Shay Uriel Pizem, 23, a tank commander in the 401st Armored Brigade’s 9th Battalion, from Ein HaNatziv, was killed in battle on Friday morning.
In addition, four reservist soldiers were seriously injured in fighting yesterday across the Palestinian enclave according to the military.
It is believed that 132 hostages remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November.
Four hostages were released prior to that, and one was rescued by troops.
The bodies of eight hostages have been recovered, and the IDF has confirmed the deaths of 20 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.
On Friday, troops operating in Gaza captured and destroyed the command center for Hamas’s Shejaiya battalion, in the north of the Strip, the IDF said in a statement.
The soldiers killed gunmen and destroyed a tunnel shaft at the scene, as a gunman inside attempted to throw an explosive device at the forces. The operation was backed up by tank fire, artillery fire and air force strikes, according to the army.
The military also said forces operating in Khan Younis in the south tackled terror infrastructure, including numerous tunnel shafts, and killed “many” gunmen there. They also located a tunnel within which were motorcycles used by terrorists during the October 7 attack on Israel.
In a visit with troops in Gaza, IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliva said that Israel “must continue to pressure the enemy; continue to kill the enemy; continue to destroy the enemy. The campaign has multiple theaters and has months to go.”
While in the field, Haliva held an operational assessment along with several top officers in the field, including division and brigade commanders.
“The maneuvering [military] machine, with its many parts — the air force, which is doing incredible work, the navy, the intelligence — is a fearsome military mechanism,” he told the senior officials.
Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas terror onslaught on October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists poured into Israel from the land, air and sea, launching the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.
The terrorists rampaged across more than 20 communities in southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and seizing some 240 hostages.
In response, Israel launched an aerial campaign and subsequent ground operation through which it has vowed to eliminate Hamas, ending the terror group’s 16-year rule in the Gaza Strip, and return all the hostages.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has claimed that more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war. However, the number cannot be independently verified and is believed to include some 7,000 Hamas and Hamas-affiliated terror operatives as well as civilians killed by misfired Palestinian rockets.
The health ministry early Friday said that dozens of people had been killed or injured in Israeli strikes on Khan Younis in southern Gaza, while witnesses said several people had been killed in airstrikes on Nuseirat in central Gaza.