Hamas reveals October 7 prisoner rescued after Israeli bombing, as ground invasion of Gaza expands
On April 26, Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, published a short video of a desperate rescue mission in the wake of an Israeli bombing in Gaza. The video showed Qassam fighters digging through rubble to rescue an Israeli prisoner of war from October 7. Hamas captioned the video, “An operation to rescue prisoners from a tunnel bombed by the occupation army several days ago.” It ended the 86-second video with the line: “Details to follow.”
It was difficult to identify the Israeli soldier in the video; however, his condition appeared vulnerable, with a Qassam fighter seen placing an oxygen mask on him in an attempt to revive him.
Al-Qassam followed up with a video over four minutes long on Saturday evening. The rescued soldier is shown heavily bandaged on his face, forehead, and left arm. The soldier identifies himself as “Prisoner number 24” and tells the camera that he was “bombed after the ceasefire ended.”
The Israelis refused to proceed with the second phase of the three-phase ceasefire deal agreed with Hamas on January 15, before laying complete siege to Gaza on March 2 and beginning relentless bombardment on March 18, when they killed more than 500 Palestinians in a night of non-stop slaughter.
The soldier revealed that after the Israelis collapsed the ceasefire, the prisoners of war were moved into the tunnels for their safety. However, the Israelis bombed their underground positions as well, endangering him. “My situation is very difficult,” the prisoner declares.
He also revealed that another Israeli was with him in the underground location, and that he has no idea about his fate. Hamas has also not shared any further details about a second Israeli in that location.
The prisoner goes on to make the by now familiar appeals to the Israelis to take to the streets and demand the release of their prisoners of war. Responding to the Israeli leadership’s allegations that videos like his constitute “psychological warfare” by the Palestinian resistance, the desperate prisoner tells the camera: “The real psychological warfare is within me.”
The video ends with the familiar Hamas refrain, “Only a ceasefire agreement brings them back alive.” “Time is running out.”
Israeli media has identified the prisoner as Maxim Herkin, a Russian-Israeli citizen. Zionist media has completely whitewashed his history in the Israeli occupation forces, solely focusing on his capture from the Nova rave on October 7 instead. All civilian prisoners — and some from the Israeli military — were released by the Palestinian resistance in the first phase of the deal; now only soldiers remain in captivity in Gaza.
Early last month, Hamas announced that Israel’s evacuation orders directly endangered the lives of half of the living Israeli captives in Gaza. In mid-April, Hamas said it had lost contact with the American-Israeli tankman Edan Alexander after the Israelis bombed the location where he was being held. His status remains unknown to this day. Now Herkin has become the latest victim of his genocidal compatriots.
Israel has been killing its citizens en masse since October 7, when it enacted the Hannibal Directive to prevent the Palestinian resistance fighters from taking Israeli captives with them into Gaza. Israeli press has extensively reported on the use of the directive on October 7. Israelis killed the vast majority of the near-1,200 Zionists killed that day, nearly half of whom were soldiers in the occupation military. Israel has also killed dozens of its captives inside Gaza. A New York Times analysis from March 2025, put the total number of dead Israelis inside Gaza at 41. That number is likely a vast undercount. Ronen Bergman, a notorious Mossad stenographer who poses as a legitimate journalist, is one of the three writers of the New York Times article. In a Hamas video from April 2024, American-Israeli captive Hersch Goldberg-Polin told the camera that 70 captives had been killed by then. That number would have significantly risen in the year since that video. Notably, Goldberg-Polin was himself killed four months after the video featuring him.
Over the last few weeks, top Israeli leaders have underlined that securing the release of the Israelis is not a priority for them. Bezalel Smotrich, finance minister of the genocidal state, was unequivocal in his pronouncement: “We have to say the truth, returning the hostages is not the most important thing.”
Similarly, Netanyahu has said that defeating Israel’s enemies was the “supreme objective,” not freeing the Israeli prisoners of war in Gaza. “We have many objectives, many goals in this war. We want to bring back all of our hostages,” Netanyahu said. “That is a very important goal. In war, there is a supreme objective. And that supreme objective is victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve.”
In yet another indication that the issue of their captives is truly unimportant to the Israelis — and is being used merely as an excuse to continue the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the Israeli military sent out “tens of thousands of call-up orders to reservists, as the military was set to significantly expand its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip,” The Times of Israel reported on Saturday. “Israel’s security cabinet was slated to convene on Sunday so ministers could vote to approve the military plans authorized by Netanyahu,” the paper added.
Despite Israel dropping more than six times the tonnage of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Palestinian resistance fighters have continued to put up a strong fight and exact a heavy toll on the Israelis for their attempted occupation of more lands where they don’t belong.
In stunning footage published by Al-Qassam on April 26, its snipers are seen taking clean shots at four Israelis. Around the 23-second mark of the nearly two-minute video, Al-Qassam says, “Our fighters carried out four double sniping operations using the Qassam-made Al-Ghoul rifles against enemy officers and soldiers at one of the newly established positions east of Beit Hanoun.”
Judging by the remarkable footage, it’s hard to imagine any of the targeted soldiers survived the accurate shots:
Al-Qassam later turned the extraordinary scene of a genocidal Israeli soldier falling head-first, with both feet in the air, to the ground into a poster, accompanied by a message from its spokesman Abu Obeida: “Our fighters lie in wait for enemy forces, to inflict a certain slaughter on them at the place, time, and method of our choosing.”
As the genocidal Israelis expand their footprint inside Gaza, the resilient Palestinian resistance — which, according to most reports, has replenished its ranks to pre-October 7 strength — will have no shortage of targets to strike. On Saturday, the Zionist press reported two “difficult security incidents” — one each in Khan Yunis and Rafah — resulting in confirmed casualties.
Judging by recent events, more Al-Qassam videos showcasing its fighters’ heroics are likely in the coming days.
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