Posted on 08/28/24
| News Source: i24
Hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi was found accidentally by the Israel Defense Forces operating to locate a Hamas tunnel network, according to two senior Israeli officials speaking to the New York Times on Tuesday.
According to the report, a team led by the elite Shayetet 13 unite scanned tunnels in search of signs of Hamas. To the surprise of the team, they found Alkadi alone, without guards, in a room located about 80 feet underground.
Alkadi is the eighth living captive released in an rescue operation, but the first to be retrieved alive from a tunnel rather than from a house. Unlike the other seven, he was released without a fight, the report said, contradicting an IDF statement. Furthermore, according to the New York Times, the IDF is still trying to understand why he was found alone, as he appears to have been abandoned by his captors.
According to a third official, the soldiers who found him initially feared that Alkadi, an Arab-Israeli citizen from the Bedouin community of Rahat, was a Hamas activist. However, they quickly realized that he was an Israeli citizen who was kidnapped on October 7. The sources also said that he looked weak and was suffering from malnutrition, and that he didn't have the strength to get out of the tunnel by himself.
The IDF said earlier that soldiers from Shayetet 13, the 401st Brigade, Yahalom unit, and Shin Bet agents – under the command of the 162nd Brigade – conducted a complex rescue operation in the south of Gaza. Alkadi was then transferred to Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheba for further tests and arrived standing on his feet.