Watch heart-stopping moment Israeli special forces rescue Israeli hostages from Hamas compound (Video)

Caption: Noa Argamani (25), Almog Meir Jan (21), Andrey Kozlov (27), and Shlomi Ziv (40) were rescued in a special operation by the IDF, ISA and Israel Police from 2 separate locations in the heart of Nuseirat after being kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival.

Heart-stopping new footage released by the Israeli army has shown the moment IDF special forces rescued four hostages during a raid in Gaza amid a hail of gunfire.

Israelis, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, Shlomi Ziv and Noa Argamani were taken by Hamas on October 7 when the militants stormed Israel in a surprise attack.

IDF special forces finally rescued them from two apartments in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Saturday, June 8.

Shocking video of the moment special forces stormed the apartments shows the terrified hostages cowering in a corner while officers greet them.

The rescue has provoked controversy after the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 274 people, including children and other civilians, were killed during the mission.

The IDF has claimed fewer than 100 people died in the operation, but if the Hamas figures are correct, it would make it one of the deadliest days of fighting so far.

In the video, the IDF forces storm into an apartment, scanning for targets before bursting into a bedroom where three men can be seen crouching down.

One of the officers greets the men, who seem reassured, and fist bumps one of them before helping them out.

Officers can then be seen standing guard outside as the captives flee through the bushes outside as gunshots ring out from within the apartments.

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the apartments were about 200 meters from each other, in the heart of the Nuseirat refugee camp.

He said forces had trained repeatedly on a model of the apartment buildings and moved in simultaneously in broad daylight on both apartments to maintain the element of surprise.

But he said the rescuers came under heavy fire as they moved out, including from gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades from within the neighbourhood.

He said the military responded with heavy force, including from aircraft, to extract the rescuers and freed hostages.

Of the 250 hostages abducted on October 7, about half were released in a week-long ceasefire in November.

About 120 hostages remain, with 43 pronounced dead. Survivors include about 15 women, two children under five and two men in their 80s.

Saturday’s operation brought the total number of rescued hostages to seven, including one who was freed shortly after the October attack. Israeli troops have recovered the bodies of at least 16 others, according to the government.

IDF Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said: ‘We are talking about Al-Nuseirat, in the centre of Gaza, where Hamas in a very cruel and cynical way is holding hostages inside civilian buildings, in apartments in buildings of three to four floors.

‘There are three hostages in one apartment, three male ones, and Noah Algamani in the second apartment.

‘There are only around 200 meters between those two buildings. We decided to do the operation on both of them because if we would have chosen one only, the risk that in the other one they would kill our hostages is a huge risk.

‘They might have been thinking that we are preparing for another raid.

‘You have to understand that they’re moving the hostages from flat to flat, it happens from week to week.

‘We need to be very, very accurate. We gather the intelligence in multiple ways in order to make sure that we are ready for this operation.

‘It has a lot of details, like in a puzzle, and we never have all the links, but we need to make sure that we have enough links.

‘We were building models of those houses in order to practice. It needs to be like a surgical operation, like a brain operation. Because if one little bit happens before another, you might kill the hostages.

‘Why did we choose daylight? Because we understood that in those apartments with those guards, daytime will be the ultimate surprise.

‘The tension in the command room was very, very high. General Levi said the approval word, “Go,” and the forces start going out at 11 am. The raid was at around 11.25 am.

‘The raid started simultaneously in both buildings. It was very, very complex, very, very intense.

‘In one building, Noa Argamani’s building we surprised them completely, but it was still hard.

‘In the other building, where the three male hostages were, we had to fire and crossfire with the guards.’

Watch a clip from the scene here.