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The raid<\/h2>\n
On Saturday morning, as the sun approached its blazing midday zenith, the residents of Nuseirat left the heat of their apartment buildings. Outside, they went to work, shopped at the market and visited family.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so normal and the streets were full of life, people selling and buying things,\u201d said Bayan Khaled abu Amr, 32, who had left home that morning to visit her uncle.<\/p>\n
Fifty miles away, Israeli officers crowded into the Tel Aviv command room of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency. \u201cThe tension in the air,\u201d Admiral Hagari said, was \u201cvery, very high.\u201d<\/p>\n
There, around 11 a.m., Gen. Herzi Halevi, the military\u2019s chief of the general staff, uttered the word \u201cGo,\u201d authorizing commandos in Israel\u2019s YAMAM counterterrorism unit to begin the raid.<\/p>\n
Soldiers in the unit started up two vehicles that had the appearance of local trucks, Israeli officials said, and made their way to each of the buildings where the hostages were being held.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Khalil abdul Qader al-Tahrawi, a 60-year-old shop owner, said he was sitting outside his store when he saw people dressed in the uniforms of the Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas, approach the building in which the three men were later found being held.<\/p>\n
The group, he said, struck him as \u201csuspicious and strange,\u201d not least because they \u201cclimbed up the building with ladders and went down again pointing their guns everywhere.\u201d He said he believed they were Israeli commandos.<\/p>\n
Other witnesses described men they, too, believed were Israeli special forces operators, but dressed in civilian clothes.<\/p>\n
Israeli officials declined to say whether Israeli forces had worn disguises during the raid.<\/p>\n
Moments after General Halevi authorized the operation, troops simultaneously raided both buildings. Ms. Argamani was kept under guard in a locked room, and her captors were quickly killed before they even realized what was happening, Israeli officials said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Noa Argamani\u2019s building,\u201d Admiral Hagari said, \u201cour forces surprised them completely.\u201d<\/p>\n
The escape<\/h2>\n
Around the time the team assigned to free Ms. Argamani was driving her to a helicopter extraction point along Gaza\u2019s Mediterranean coast, the team working to rescue the three men in the other building began taking fire, Admiral Hagari said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It was then that Arnon Zmora, 36, an officer in the YAMAM unit, was shot and wounded, according to Admiral Hagari. Body-cam footage released by the Israeli border police shows Israeli troops finding the male hostages inside a residential apartment building, even as they continued to exchange fire with militants off screen.<\/p>\n
In the footage, edited to blur soldiers\u2019 faces and remove images of gore, the hostages are then seen leaving the building and scrambling through a tree-filled lot as gunfire erupts all around them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMembers of Hamas shot at them,\u201d said Mr. al-Tahrawi, the shop owner.<\/p>\n
More militants joined the fight, according to Admiral Hagari, \u201crunning in the streets with RPGs,\u201d an acronym for rocket-propelled grenades. \u201cA lot of fire was around us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As Ms. Argamani was approaching the beach in one vehicle, the other truck being used in the rescue broke down, according to Israeli officials, who requested anonymity to discuss a clandestine operation. To provide the stalled truck with cover, the officials said, the air force began bombing the nearby area, effectively creating a shield of fire. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cSuddenly, I heard a loud bomb and sound of some missiles around that mosque,\u201d said Ms. Abu Amr, the woman who had been out visiting her uncle. \u201cI cannot remember the exact time, but maybe 11:20 a.m.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cAgain, a big, loud missile was heard, and gray smoke was rising,\u201d Ms. Abu Amr added. \u201cPeople started shouting.\u201d In the chaos of the bombing, she said, \u201ckids were screaming; women were falling down while running.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israeli ground forces stationed nearby made their way to the disabled truck and transferred the hostages and Chief Inspector Zmora, the wounded officer, to another vehicle, Israeli officials said.<\/p>\n
From there, they sped to the beach, where the second of two helicopters had been waiting for them. The first had already taken off with Ms. Argamani on board.<\/p>\n
Footage released by the military showed soldiers walking the hostages along the beach as a helicopter whipped up clouds of sand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n