The father of rescued Israeli hostage Almog Meir Jan “died of grief” just hours before his son returned home, his family have said.
Yossi Meir, 59, died of a heart attack before the news broke that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had freed his son in a raid on the town of Nuseirat in Gaza.
The army were unable to contact Mr Meir to tell him the news and reached out to his sister Dina Jan instead. Ms Jan, who said she “was so happy I didn’t know what to do”, rushed to Mr Meir’s home in Kfar Saba, in the south of Israel.
She found her brother had died, after months of agonising waiting.
‘I screamed his name’
Ms Jan told Israel’s Kan News: “I drove like crazy, I knocked, ‘Yossi, Yossi, Yossi’, and nothing. I got no answer. The door of his house was open and I saw him sleeping in the living room.
“I screamed ‘Yossi’ to him and he didn’t answer me. I saw the colour of his skin, I touched him, but he was dead.”
Mr Meir had lost 20 kilograms since the capture, “glued to the television for the whole eight months, clinging to every piece of information”, Ms Jan said. She added: “My brother died of grief and didn’t get to see his son return.”
It is believed Mr Meir died on Friday night. “We are very happy about Almog’s return, but the brain is unable to absorb that this is the end. We are broken,” Ms Jan said.
A complex rescue operation
The IDF said the operation to rescue Mr Jan on Saturday was one of its most complex ever, with two separate rescues of four captives in broad daylight.
They said troops came under heavy gunfire from hundreds of Hamas forces during the operation, which brought together elite Israeli units in an undercover mission across air, land and sea.
One of the troops, Amon Zamora, from Israel’s Yamam counter-terror unit, was fatally injured.
The Hamas-run Gazan health authorities said 274 people had been killed in the Israeli raid.
Mr Jan had been held along with Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv. Noa Argamani was rescued simultaneously from a second apartment in the heavily populated civilian area.
Ms Argamani’s capture by Hamas on Oct 7 came to define that brutal massacre after footage of her screaming as she was driven on a motorbike into Gaza was broadcast around the globe. On Saturday, she was reunited with her mother, who is terminally ill with brain cancer.
All four hostages had been taken by Hamas from the SuperNova music festival, where hundreds of partygoers were slaughtered.
Mr Kozolov, a Russian-Israeli hostage, was greeted on Sunday by his parents, who flew from Russia for a reunion at Sheba Medical Centre.
Mr Kozolov’s mother said: “I am the happiest I’ve ever been. We talked to Andrey, he looks and feels fine, he is even joking around.”
Including the four hostages recovered on Saturday, a total of seven have been rescued alive by the IDF. Another 19 bodies have been brought back to Israel and the IDF has now confirmed the deaths of 41 of the remaining 116 hostages still in Gaza.
Source Agencies
