Channel 13 News reporter and military commentator Or Heller spoke about the hostage rescue operation in an interview on Radio 103FM.

“There was intelligence information for a long time about the location of Louis and Fernando in Rafah but there weren’t operational and intelligence conditions to carry out the operation,” he said. “On Sunday night, all the conditions were met in terms of the ability to carry out an operation that would also rescue the hostages alive. The forces – Shin Bet and Yamam – entered at about 1 a.m. They raided the building – there was an element of descending from the roof, and the idea was to surprise the Hamas terrorists and end the event in seconds.”

“The main concern was that the Hamas terrorists would murder the hostages, so the forces brought bulletproof vests and helmets to put on them in order to get them out alive. The operation began, and already at 1:50 a.m., the Air Force began bombing dozens of Hamas targets to enable the rescue. The operation itself took only about a minute. The commandos surprised the Hamas terrorists, killed at least three terrorists who were guarding the hostages, and then began taking out the hostages.”

“From one side, the Air Force attacked dozens of Hamas targets, because they opened fire from several buildings on the forces, and from the other side, a convoy arrived with tanks from Khan Younis along with Shayetet 13 commandos. That’s when the IDF soldiers put the bulletproof vests and helmets on the hostages – so they wouldn’t be hit by  gunfire.”

To the question regarding estimates that there are more hostages in that area of Rafah – he replied: “First of all we need to take into account that the hostages from Nir Yitzchak were taken to Rafah from the beginning. The women from the family were released on the 53rd day of the war in the first deal. I assume they contributed quite a bit to the intelligence picture, but think about the amount of time that has passed. This is one point.”

“The second point – note that this operation, along with the rescue operation of Ori Magidish, which unfortunately are the only two military operations that have so far succeeded in rescuing hostages – in both cases, the hostages were above ground. You understand how complex it is to carry out such operations in tunnels, and we estimate that most of the hostages who are alive are still in the tunnels. which is much more difficult. That perhaps explains [Gadi] Eisenkot’s statement that: ‘There will be no Entebbe operations here.'”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)