It’s heartbreaking horror continuing in Gaza this weekend. Although four Israeli hostages held by Hamas since October were rescued yesterday, the carnage required to get the job done was really, really hideous — the ruthless slaughter astounding.

The IDF planned the rescue for weeks:

The rescue operation on Saturday that freed four Israeli hostages and killed more than 270 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, was one of the most dramatic and deadly episodes of Israel’s war against Hamas. https://t.co/MSsdl9emZ3

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 9, 2024

However, shit can hit the fan, and it did — details via The Washington Post late this afternoon:

The rescue operation on Saturday that freed four Israeli hostages and killed more than 270 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, was one of the most dramatic and deadly episodes of Israel’s war against Hamas. This account is based on more than a dozen interviews with former and current Israeli military officials, family members of hostages and Palestinian eyewitnesses, as well as analysis of verified video footage.

Argamani and three other Israeli hostages would be extracted from central Gaza and reunited with family in a complex daylight operation involving thousands of troops, technicians and analysts.

It was planned for weeks and executed smoothly, Israeli officials said, until the tight commando raid turned into a firefight with militants. The Israeli military responded with a massive aerial assault on the crowded streets of Nuseirat.

The bombs kept falling and the streets echoed with screams, Abu Asi said.

It was like “doomsday.”

Go read the whole piece if you can — behind a paywall, it’s the Post. The first hostage, Argamani, was extracted without incident, surprising her guards, but nasty shit started with Hamas alarms detecting the assault on the other three. And for some horrifying reason, slaughter was the only point of action.
Further from the Guardian also this afternoon — Ansam Haroun, clothes shopping for her daughters:

“The Nuseirat market is always crowded, but now more than usual because of the many displaced people,” said Haroun, 29, who is now staying with an uncle. She was looking at outfits for the girls when the first Israeli airstrikes hit, and almost without thinking raced out of the door to go to them.

Outside, she found a scene “like the horrors of judgment day”, as panicked crowds tried to escape the coming onslaught. Helicopters and quadcopter drones would soon join the assault that left hundreds dead, and shattered bodies scattered along the streets, images from the area show.

“Everyone was screaming, terrified,” she said. “The street I was on was only 50 metres long, but it was packed with hundreds of people, all running. A woman next to me fainted from terror, and I saw vendors abandoning their goods on the roadside to flee.”

Go read that whole thing, too  — not paywalled. Horrible shit, though.
Hamas is a way-most terrible, monstrous gang, and but WTF Israel. Bibi needs to go.

Dramatic shit-hitting-the-fan — too common a story from Gaza:

Slaughter without thought of consequence, yet once again here we are…

(Illustration out front: Pablo Picasso’s ‘The Weeping Woman [La Femme qui pleure],’ found here)