Slain hostages’ final moments revealed

By World Israel News Staff

An audio recording of one of the three Israeli hostages mistakenly shot and killed by IDF forces in Gaza last December revealing his attempts to save himself and his two fellow captives was leaked to the media and published Sunday.

Israel’s Kan released the audio recording, featuring the final moments of Alon Shimriz, 26, Yotam Haim, 28, and Samer Talaka, 24 just before they were shot and killed by IDF soldiers who mistook them for Hamas terrorists.\

The incident occurred in Shuja’iyya in the northern Gaza Strip on December 15th, when an Israeli sniper opened fire on a group of men initially believed to be terrorists, who had just emerged from a building.

While one of the men was carrying a makeshift white flag, made out of a stick and cloth, the sniper failed to identify the flag, and opened fire, an IDF probe into the incident revealed.

Reconnaissance footage which was later recovered from the remains of an army dog dispatched to scout out the area with a GoPro camera revealed that the three were in fact captives who had fled their captors and were hoping to be rescued by passing IDF forces.

 

An audio recording from the incident, captured by a camera carried by a scout dog from the IDF’s Oketz unit, was leaked and published by Kan Sunday, in which Alon Shimriz –  who had been carrying the makeshift white flag – approached an IDF force asking to be rescued.

Both Shimriz and Haim can be heard in the recording shouting “We are hostages!” and “Save us!” to the IDF troops.

Shimriz’s brother, Yonatan Shimriz, castigated the IDF over the leaked audio, tweeting: “We saw the investigation in front of a bunch of smug officers. During the recording part, my mother left because she knew she wouldn’t be able to bear it.”

“I listened – the tears flowed and my blood froze for several minutes. I thought it was behind us – no one needs to hear this. And yet here the Israeli army is leaking and inflicting psychological terror on us by Hamas. Now it’s out, forever.
Long live the State of Israel.”

The audio recording was leaked a day after the army refused an appeal by the Shimriz family to have their son recognized as a fallen IDF soldier. The army rejected the request, noting that he was neither on active duty nor called up for reserve duty at the time of his death.