GAZA STRIP (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – The Israeli military said a hostage was rescued Tuesday from a Gaza tunnel, more than 10 months after the Israeli Bedouin man was seized during the Hamas attack that triggered a devastating war.
Talks aiming to secure a Gaza truce and hostage release deal meanwhile continued in Qatar, a US official said. Neither Israel nor Hamas have confirmed their participation.
The Israeli military said forces had found Kaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, in a tunnel in southern Gaza "when he was alone", despite a previous assessment that militants "and explosives" were there.
He is one of 251 people abducted by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attack on southern Israel, 104 of whom are still captive in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.
Violence meanwhile raged on in the war that has ravaged the Gaza Strip, displaced nearly all of its 2.4 million people at least once and triggered a humanitarian crisis.
The civil defence agency in the Hamas-run territory said separate Israeli strikes killed at least 15 people in Gaza City and in two refugee camps in central and southern Gaza.
At Israel's Soroka Medical Centre where Alkadi was taken to, hospital director Shlomi Kodesh told AFP he "appears to be in good condition".
"But anyone who was in tunnels for such an extended period of time is prone to significant medical problems" and Alkadi was kept for "continued evaluation", Kodesh told AFP.
A resident of Rahat, a predominantly Bedouin Arab town in southern Israel, Alkadi had been working as a guard at a warehouse in one of the areas militants stormed on October 7, according to the military.
Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum welcomed the release but stressed that "a negotiated deal is the only way" to ensure the return of other captives.
US CLAIMS TALKS PROGRESS
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced growing criticism from protesters accusing him of blocking a deal and prolonging the war for political gain, said Israel was "working tirelessly to bring all our hostages back".
Hostage rescues are rare, with Alkadi being the eighth freed alive by Israeli forces since the military began its ground operations in the Gaza Strip on October 27.
Scores were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel during a week-long truce in November -- the only one in the war so far.
In a video issued by Netanyahu's office after he spoke with Alkadi, the hawkish leader said "military presence on the ground and continuous military pressure on Hamas" are required to secure the captives' release.
A key sticking point in negotiations has been Israel's insistence on keeping control of a Gaza-Egypt border strip to stop Hamas from rearming, something the militant group has refused to countenance.
Egyptian state-linked Al-Qahera News has said Cairo, which has been mediating the talks alongside Qatar and the United States, "will not accept any Israeli presence" on the so-called Philadelphi Corridor on the border.
The United States, Israel's top arms provider, struck a cautious note of optimism on Monday.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby reported "progress" in mediation efforts and said more talks involving lower-level "working groups" were expected in the coming days.
'INDISCRIMINATE'
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign since then has killed at least 40,476 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
In the latest violence, an Israeli strike on central Gaza's Al-Maghazi refugee camp killed at least seven people, including three children from the same family, according to civil defence rescuers.
"We woke up to the sound of the explosion and shrapnel flying at us," said Mohammed Yussef, who witnessed the strike.
"There is no safe area in Gaza. Where do we go?"
A strike later on Tuesday on a house in Gaza City killed a woman and her three children, the civil defence agency said.
After the latest in a string of Israeli evacuation orders, the UN humanitarian office OCHA said its "ability to deliver essential support and services" had been "severely" hampered.
Amnesty International said two Israeli strikes on southern Gaza that killed at least 59 people in late May were "indiscriminate" and "should be investigated as war crimes".
The rights group said its investigation had found that "Israeli forces failed to take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimise harm to civilians" while targeting Palestinian militants at displacement camps.