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Three Israeli hostages mistakenly killed by the IDF had been holding a white flag, an Israeli military official has said.

The official said an initial inquiry into the incident has found the hostages were fired upon against Israel’s rules of engagement.

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The IDF said yesterday that the victims – all Israeli men in their 20s – were killed during combat with Hamas militants.

They had wrongly been identified as a threat, the military said previously.

The victims were identified as Samer al Talalka, 22, Yotam Haim, 28, and Alon Shamriz, 26.

Sharing further updates, the IDF official said the hostages were killed in an area of intense combat where Hamas militants operate in civilian attire and use deception tactics.

A soldier saw the hostages emerging tens of metres from Israeli forces in the area of Shejaiya, he added.

“They’re all without shirts and they have a stick with a white cloth on it. The soldier feels threatened and opens fire. He declares that they’re terrorists, they [forces] open fire, two are killed immediately,” the military official stated.

The third hostage was wounded and retreated into a nearby building where he called for help in Hebrew, the official said.

“Immediately the battalion commander issues a ceasefire order, but again there’s another burst of fire towards the third
figure and he also dies,” said the official. “This was against our rules of engagement,” he added.

Hundreds of protesters filled the streets of Tel Aviv last night after the IDF first announced the deaths.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incident an “unbearable tragedy” and vowed to continue “with a supreme effort to return all the hostages home safely”.

“Together with the entire people of Israel, I bow my head in deep sorrow and mourn the death of three of our dear sons who were kidnapped,” Mr Netanyahu said.

“My heart goes out to the grieving families in their difficult time.”

The three killed hostages were abducted by Hamas during their attack on 7 October which triggered the war. More than 100 hostages still remain captive, according to Israeli authorities.

‘We had so many hopes he would come back to us’

A relative of one of the three hostages killed by the IDF said his family had “so many hopes” that he would return safely.

Alaa al Talalka, the cousin of Samer al Talalka, also told Israeli broadcaster Kan that now was “not the time” to seek someone to blame for his death.

“We’re not going to start pointing fingers, who is guilty and who is not. It is just not the time,” he said.

“The families are thinking only of how to bring the hostages back alive. This is the time to ask for the war to end.”

The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, which represents the families of hostages, expressed its condolences and paid tribute to the victims.

It said that “Yotam was a gifted musician and dedicated metal music fan who idolised the band Megadeth” while “Samer was an avid motorcyclist who loved to ride around the countryside and spend time with friends”.

The forum added: “Alon’s family and friends described him as a lover of life and a dedicated basketball fan.”

Donald Trump has said undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” during a speech in New Hampshire.

The Republican presidential frontrunner repeated language that had previously been criticised as xenophobic and echoing Nazi rhetoric.

Mr Trump made the comments during a campaign event where he railed against the record number of migrants attempting to cross the US border illegally.

He has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and restrict legal immigration if elected to a second four-year term in office.

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“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” he told a rally in the city of Durham attended by several thousand supporters.

He said immigrants were coming to the US from Asia and Africa in addition to South America, adding: “All over the world they are pouring into our country.”

He used the same “poisoning the blood” language during an interview with The National Pulse, a right-leaning website that was published in late September.

It prompted a rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League, whose leader, Jonathan Greenblatt, called the language “racist, xenophobic and despicable”.

Jason Stanley, a Yale professor and author of a book on fascism, said Mr Trump’s repeated use of that language was dangerous.

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He said the words echoed the rhetoric of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

“He is now employing this vocabulary in repetition in rallies. Repeating dangerous speech increases its normalisation and the practices it recommends,” he said.

“This is very concerning talk for the safety of immigrants in the US.”

In October, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung had dismissed criticism of the former president’s language as “nonsensical”, arguing that similar language was prevalent in books, news articles and on TV.

The gulf between the US and the Israeli government visions for “the day after” in Gaza seems to be widening by the day.

In his Saturday news conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed, again, a two-state solution and insisted Israel will have enduring security control in Gaza.

In doing so, he undermined the alliance through which America is backing Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

The Biden administration has repeatedly defined its backing of Israel as being to support its right to self-defence by eradicating Hamas in order to establish a viable pathway to two states.

Follow latest: Three Israeli hostages killed mistakenly by IDF

Contradictions over ‘the day after’

America’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has just left Israel where we are told he reiterated America’s desire for a Palestinian/Arab-led security structure in Gaza when the war is over, and for the establishment of a “two-state solution” soon thereafter.

Mr Sullivan talked of a Palestinian-led “nucleus” for the security question in Gaza and even discussed West Bank-based Palestinian units that could have a key role.

A senior US administration official said late on Thursday night after Sullivan’s meeting with Netanyahu: “There are a number of security personnel linked to the Palestinian Authority, which we think might be able to provide some sort of a nucleus in the many months following the overall military campaign, but this is something we are discussing with the Palestinians and with the Israelis, and with regional partners…”

The official also insisted repeatedly that President Biden’s view was that the only option for the future was a two-state solution with the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.

The US official, on a background call with journalists, described the US vision as “…the type of future that everybody wants to see which is a path, a pathway ultimately, to a viable, two-state solution in which Israel’s security is guaranteed and the aspirations of the Palestinian people can be met.”

And yet this weekend, not only has the Israeli Prime Minister brazenly lauded his own efforts to prevent a Palestinian State over the years, but he is insisting that Israel will have enduring security control over Gaza.

“Nobody else can ensure that there will be a peaceful regime,” Netanyahu said.

He is repeating messages his ministers and ambassadors have been issuing, rejecting the two-state solution. Netanyahu has often danced around the issue giving vague definitions of what it would look like.

The point now is this: at the very moment where alignment is required, and where it’s surely important for the messaging from the top of the Israeli government to match that at the top of the American government, Netanyahu is choosing instead to be provocatively contrary.

Indeed, this past week, I asked US State Department spokesman Matt Miller about the Israeli Ambassador to the UK’s rejection of the two-state solution.

His response suggested he thought she was an outlier and that there were a variety of views. Clearly that variety doesn’t stretch to the man running the war which America is fuelling.

New leaders

Ultimately American policy relies on an urgent change at the top of both the Israeli and the Palestinian leadership.

For Israel, the Americans want Netanyahu out. It’s telling that Sullivan saw opposition leader Benny Gantz for a lengthy meeting on Thursday.

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Netanyahu will surely do all he can to hang on, largely to avoid a reckoning over the failures which led to the 7 October nightmare. He’d probably be glad to see his old pal Donald Trump back in the White House too. And so the master of political manoeuvring will try to hang on.

As for the Palestinians? Well, the Americans talk about a “revitalised Palestinian Authority” capable of running Gaza. What they actually mean by that is the retirement of aging and deeply unpopular Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. They want a younger and more visionary leader to replace him. But who, and how?

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A prize needed

The Israelis are likely to focus more on the “day after” in Gaza once they have demonstrated some strategic success on the battlefield. They have razed the strip and nearly 20,000 people are dead. But the Hamas leadership remains at large. Netanyahu needs a “prize” so he can wind back the brutal war.

But the longer the war drags on, the harder the “day after” will be to mould. With the shock and pain of the last 70 days, reconciliation and coexistence firmly feel more distant than ever for this region.

A fire that broke out at a hotel in Galway which was due to be used to house asylum seekers is being treated as a crime by police.

Irish police are investigating after a blaze broke out at Ross Lake House Hotel in Rosscahill, Co Galway, at around 11.35pm on Saturday.

No one was inside the building at the time, and the fire service brought the flames under control.

Gardai are treating the fire as a criminal damage incident and said the scene was set to be examined further on Sunday afternoon.

The hotel has not been in use for several years and had been selected to house 70 asylum seekers in the coming days.

The government’s plan had been heavily criticised by local opposition and protesters had blocked the hotel’s entrance earlier on Saturday.

Police are appealing for anyone who may have information regarding the fire to contact them.

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Figures from the CSO show that in the year leading up to April 2023, the number of immigrants to Ireland was more than 140,000 – a 16-year-high.

According to police, it was anti-immigration protesters who were involved in the huge riot in Dublin city centre last month after a stabbing attack left three young children and their carer were injured.

Police officers were attacked and vehicles were set alight as part of the riot.

Pavlos Pavlidis leans back in the chair of his office, surveys several cardboard boxes on his desk and takes a deep draw of one of many cigarettes.

Pavlidis is a coroner at the hospital in Alexandroupolis, in northern Greece.

Since he started working here in 2000, he’s been carrying out post-mortems on migrants who’ve died trying to get into Greece, and then attempting to identify them.

“The cause of death is normally obvious,” he tells me. “The problem is finding out who they actually were.”

Within minutes of meeting him, he’s showing me photos to illustrate the difference between those who have died from drowning and hypothermia.

They are not for the squeamish, but he insists people should understand just how dangerous these crossings are.

“All these people – they were killed by migration,” he says.

He conducts a post-mortem to establish the causes of death (“it’s normally obvious,” he says, with a shrug) but Pavlidis also dutifully catalogues ways that the victim might be identified.

Some carry passports, but these gradually disintegrate in the water, along with other paper documents.

All possessions are kept in sealed bags

The clothing they were wearing when found is photographed and so too are any tattoos or items of jewellery.

Everything is kept in a bag, marked with a unique reference number that tracks their case, from the first police report until eventually, a gravestone.

The bodies are kept at the hospital, either in a special area of the morgue or in refrigerated units that are, incongruously, positioned on a service road outside the building.

The idea is to hope that someone, somewhere, will register a missing person, get shown a photo of clothing or jewellery and come forward to put a name to the body.

The bags of possessions are in the boxes on Pavlidis’ desk, carefully sealed and kept for the day when a relative might suddenly appear.

Some are distinctive – a wooden crucifix pendant taken from a man who drowned; a bracelet proclaiming, “I BELIEVE”; notes from friends and family.

There is a baby’s dummy in one bag.

Pavlos believes that, occasionally, a family can be reunited with the body of the loved one they lost, that he can deliver closure: “An answer, even if it’s a bad answer,” as he calls it.

And then, as we talk, two people arrive outside his office – a Syrian family who now live in Germany.

A year before, their brother had tried to get into Greece from Turkey.

Those with him said he reached dry land, but then thought he heard shooting, and jumped back into the water to hide.

The catastrophic problem was that the man was wearing all the clothing he could carry, and the water soaked them immediately. He drowned.

His sister contacted the Red Cross, who had already received photos from Pavlidis.

And one of those photos – of a distinctive zip-up jacket – looked familiar. It was her brother’s.

‘The body is outside in the refrigerator’

They come and sit in the office.

Pavlidis, calmly and with little ceremony, confirms some details.

“The body is outside in the refrigerator”, he says.

He shows them a photo. “Look at these shoes?”

“Yes, yes,” says his sister, through tears.

Another photo, this time of the clothing. Another nod. More quiet sobbing. It’s clear that it’s their relative, but they must be sure.

So, the woman is told to provide a DNA sample – a swab taken from inside her cheek and a few drops of blood from her finger.

It will be compared with the DNA sample taken from the body.

But the process is not quick. Pavlidis expects it to take a month.

The family, weary and glassy-eyed, had hoped for an answer within a couple of days.

“It will be him – I am 99% sure,” says Pavlidis, after the relatives have left.

On his shelves are 24 lever-arch files – one for each year since he started keeping records back in 2000.

“My focus is on the relatives, on doing what is best for them,” he says.

“The relatives must know what happened. It is…”, he pauses, “ethical.”

‘The Mediterranean is becoming a mass grave’

Thousands have already died this year crossing the Mediterranean to try to get to Europe.

“Europe has the highest number of dead and missing migrants in the world,” says Kathryne Bomberger, director-general of the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP).

“The Mediterranean is becoming a mass grave on a scale that has not been seen in the world before.”

The ICMP has long been at the forefront of using DNA to try to track down missing people, pioneered following the most appalling excesses of the Bosnian war.

“We started using DNA because of Srebrenica,” she says.

Now, they pursue people who have gone missing because of natural disasters, war, trafficking, crime, human slavery or, of course, migration.

They have helped to identify more than 20,000 people over the years.

Sometimes, after a natural disaster, a government will do everything it can to help arrange identification.

But when it comes to putting a name to migrants who’ve died while trying to get into Europe, the support is not there.

It is, says Bomberger, “an ad hoc” process: “I’ll be honest with you, there is no mechanism. All the things we hoped would be put into place still don’t exist.

“Every time there is a disaster like the ship that went down off Greece, we all scramble.”

‘We have a million ideas, but… it’s politics’

What she wants is structure and organisation, with the ability to share data and buy-in from governments.

“The DNA mechanisms and the data systems exist. We have a million ideas about how to ensure co-operation, but the governments need to take responsibility…it’s politics.”

So instead, like Pavlidis, she perseveres – working and waiting, helping and hoping.

An hour’s drive from Pavlidis’s busy hospital, and we are standing in a cemetery at the end of a dusty track on the outskirts of a remote Greek village.

The sun is setting, and the weeds are tall.

A praying mantis is idling on a leaf by my feet.

And all around us are hundreds of graves occupied by people who never saw this place in their lives.

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Everyone buried here was a migrant, who died while trying to cross the nearby border with Turkey and so reach the promised land of the European Union.

And almost all of them are anonymous, their graves marked only by roughly-shaped stones covered in a rudimentary whitewash.

This is a cemetery of the unknown.

But each grave comes with a number, a story and a paper trail.

Look into these numbers, and you can find out where the body was found, how the person died, whether they had any distinguishing features, what they were wearing.

The clues that might just lead to a name appearing on those blank headstones someday.

At one end of the cemetery, praying quietly, is Mehmet Serif Damadoglu.

For decades, he was the Imam and he still lives here, in Sidiro.

It was he who oversaw hundreds of ceremonies at the local mosque, where migrants’ bodies were wrapped, blessed and then taken for burial.

The small local cemeteries began filling up and the locals complained that they would have no space left for their own families, so Damadoglu helped to set up this new burial ground outside the village.

It is used only for migrants’ graves and there are now more people buried here than there are residents living in the village.

He is a man blessed with an easy smile and an enduring sense of faith in the world.

“For us, all that matters is that they were fellow human beings, and therefore they deserve our respect. That’s all. No matter where they came from, they are human beings.

“Whoever comes looking for their relative, we know that they lie there, in that cemetery. It is exclusively for them.

“The burial rituals we perform on them, there is no discrimination. All the rituals I performed for my father and my mother, the exact same rituals we perform for the migrants. They are neither inferior nor superior. We are equal.”

It’s an ideological position that has not always gone down well.

He tells an extraordinary story of holding a service for a young man whose body was badly decomposed.

The village opposed it, saying it was unsanitary and that, if it had to take place at all, it should be rushed.

Damadoglu was resolute: “I said to them – what if this was your son? Would you stop me?”

And then, on the day of the burial, the man’s sister arrived from Somalia.

The Imam told her not to open the shroud, to remember him as he was, but instead she undid the stitches and hugged her brother’s remains. It was a moment of closure – rare but precious.

And that is the hope that is symbolised by this cemetery on a hill. Blank gravestones that are waiting for a name.