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What we know about the raid that rescued 4 Israeli hostages from Gaza
The complex raid deep into a built-up refugee camp in central Gaza to rescue four held hostage by Hamas on Saturday was the largest rescue operation since Hamas and other militants stormed across the border and attacked Israel, triggering the ongoing war.
Scores of hostages are believed to be held in densely populated areas or inside Hamas’ labyrinth of tunnels, making such operations extremely complex and risky.
The Israeli raid in Nuseirat camp, which dates back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, on Saturday led to the rescue of 26-year-old Noa Argamani, 22-year-old Almong Meir Jan, 27-year-old Andrey Kozlov and 41-year-old Shlomi Ziv, who were all kidnapped from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 274 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were wounded in the raid. The Israeli military said its forces came under heavy fire during the complex daytime operation and that “under 100” Palestinians were killed, though it was not clear how many of them were militants or civilians.
A timeline of the raid
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, told reporters on Saturday that the military has been planning the operation for several weeks, building precise models of the apartment buildings to repeatedly train.
The hostages, he said, were being held in two apartments about 200 meters (219 yards) away from each other. They were targeted simultaneously in broad daylight because there was a “huge risk they’d kill hostages in the other one,” Hagari said.
According to Hagari, the operation in the building where they found Argamani went smoothly, while in the second building with the three male hostages, they were met with crossfire from the guards – including from gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades from within the neighborhood. He said the military responded with heavy force, including from aircraft, to extract the rescuers and the freed hostages.
An Israeli police special forces officer was critically injured and later died in this hospital.
Jehad Alshrafi / AP
Dr. Itai Pessach, a physician at Sheba Hospital where the freed captives were being treated, said none had serious physical injuries but that it would likely be days before they could be discharged.
“A lot of them have lost friends and family. Things happened in these eight months that they weren’t here. So (medical staff) have been assisting them in rebuilding the infrastructure of their life,” he told reporters.
Who are the hostages
Argamani, Meir Jan, Kozlov, and Ziv were all kidnapped at the Nova music festival. They were recovered after the IDF announced it was striking “terrorist infrastructure” in central Gaza.
Argamani has emerged as an icon of the agonizing hostage crisis that is still far from over. She appeared in a series of videos that captured the painful trajectory of their plight.
IDF Handout
Meir Jan, from a small town near Tel Aviv, had finished his army service three months before the attack at the music festival, according to the Times of Israel. A forum set up by families of the hostages said he was supposed to start a job at a tech company the day after the attack.
Kozlov was working as a security guard at the festival. He had immigrated from Russia to Israel alone a year and a half earlier, and his mother came to the country after Oct. 7, Israeli media reported.
IDF Handout
Ziv is from a farming community in northern Israel and was working as an usher and had gone to the music festival with two friends who were both killed, the Times of Israel reported.
U.S. provided intelligence support
The United States, one of Israel’s largest allies, provided support to the Israeli forces, two U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News on Saturday. The U.S. military did not participate in the operation, a U.S. official said.
The U.S. role came mainly in the form of intelligence support, two U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News, but they declined to share sensitive details regarding the operation.
Video circulating online Saturday showed an IDF helicopter taking off from the beach with the temporary floating pier built by the U.S. in the backdrop. Two U.S. officials told CBS News that the U.S. pier was not used in the IDF operation. It is offshore to assist delivery of humanitarian aid. A U.S. official explained that the helicopter landed south of the facility on a beach but not within the cordoned area of the pier.
“The pier facility was not used in the operation to rescue hostages today in Gaza. An area south of the facility was used to safely return the hostages to Israel,” a U.S. official said. “Any such claim to the contrary is false. The temporary pier on the coast of Gaza was put in place for one purpose only, to help get more urgently needed lifesaving assistance into Gaza.”
Hagari, the IDF spokesperson, also said the rumor that Israeli forces came from the temporary pier was “completely false.”
“We know it’s a true ally that assists us against Hamas, against terrorists and it happens around the clock,” he said about U.S. support during the operation.
Scenes of horror at Gaza hospital
In Gaza, medics described to the Associated Press scenes of chaos after Saturday’s raid as wounded people overwhelmed hospitals that were already struggling to treat the wounded from days of heavy Israeli strikes in the area.
“We had the gamut of war wounds, trauma wounds, from amputations to eviscerations to trauma, to TBIs (traumatic brain injuries), fractures, and obviously, big burns,” Karin Huster of Doctors Without Borders, an international charity working in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, told the AP.
“Kids completely grey or white from the shock, burnt, screaming for their parents. Many of them are not screaming because they are in shock.”
Jehad Alshrafi / AP
The killing of so many Palestinians, including women and children, in a raid showed the heavy cost of such operations on top of the already soaring toll of the 8-month-long war.
Hostages still missing
Hamas abducted 250 hostages during its Oct. 7 attack. About half were released in a weeklong cease-fire in November. About 120 hostages remain, with 43 presumed dead. Survivors include about 15 women, two children under 5 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.
World Food Programme worker injured
The United Nations’ World Food Programme exeuctive director Cindy McCain told “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning that one of their workers was among those injured in the raid.
Haley Ott, Margaret Brennan, David Martin, Clarie Day, Olivia Gazis and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.
Frito-Lay is recalling a limited number of 13 oz. bags of Lay’s Classic Potato Chips after being alerted by a consumer contact that the product may contain undeclared milk.
The bags of chips affected by recall were distributed to certain retail stores and e-commerce distributors in Oregon and Washington and were available for sale beginning Nov. 3, 2024.
“Those with an allergy or severe sensitivity to milk run the risk of a serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume the recalled product,” the Food and Drug Administration said in the recall notice posted Thursday.
No allergic reactions related to the recall have been reported, according to the recall. Additionally, no other Lay’s products, flavors, sizes or variety packs are affected.
FDA
The recalled chips include Lay’s Classic Potato Chips, in flexible 13 oz. (368.5 grams) bags with UPC code 28400 31041, a “Guaranteed Fresh” date of 11 Feb 2025, and one of either two manufacturing codes: 6462307xx or 6463307xx.
General guidelines from the FDA advise consumers who have purchased any recalled food to dispose of the product or return it to the retailer for a full refund.
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What is the debt ceiling? Here’s why Trump wants Congress to abolish it before he takes office
Washington — President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk blew up a GOP-backed deal to fund federal agencies into March, raising the pressure on Republican congressional leaders to craft a plan to avert a government shutdown just before the holidays.
In a statement Wednesday, Trump and Vance lambasted the agreement for including provisions favored by Democrats. But the incoming president and vice president also added a new, significant wrinkle to negotiations when they urged Congress to raise or abolish the debt ceiling now, instead of next year.
“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch,” Trump and Vance said in their statement. “If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now.”
What is the debt ceiling?
Set by Congress, the debt ceiling, or limit, is the maximum amount of money the U.S. Treasury is authorized to borrow to pay debts incurred by the federal government. Lifting the debt ceiling does not authorize new spending, but instead lets the government spend money on obligations that Congress has already been approved.
Failing to address the debt ceiling could lead the U.S. to default on its debt, which would have devastating effects on the economy. The government has never defaulted, and the Treasury typically uses accounting moves, known as “extraordinary measures,” to delay breaching the debt ceiling.
While raising the debt ceiling used to be routine, legislation addressing it has in recent years been used as leverage to force policy concessions and fuel debates over government spending.
Congress last addressed the debt ceiling in June 2023 as part of a legislative package negotiated by President Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That deal suspended the debt ceiling through Jan., 1, 2025, ensuring any fight over it would take place after the 2024 elections.
The Treasury Department will likely implement extraordinary measures to stave off a default in the new year. It will also announce an “X date,” the estimated point at which the government will no longer be able to pay its obligations. The Economic Policy Innovation Center, a conservative think tank, projected in an analysis released Monday that it’s possible the debt limit will be reached by June 16.
While the Treasury Department’s use of extraordinary measures would give Congress more time to address the debt ceiling, Trump is now urging lawmakers to take action now, before he takes office.
Why does Trump want to raise the debt ceiling?
The president-elect will come into office with a legislative to-do list that includes securing the border and extending provisions of his signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was enacted in 2017 and overhauled the tax code. But a fight over the debt ceiling could complicate efforts by the Republican-led House and Senate to focus on those legislative initiatives and pass them quickly.
Trump is urging lawmakers to eliminate the debt ceiling altogether, a position that some prominent Democrats have endorsed in the past.
“Number one, the debt ceiling should be thrown out entirely,” Trump said in a phone interview Thursday with CBS News’ Robert Costa. “Number two, a lot of the different things they thought they’d receive [in a recently proposed spending deal] are now going to be thrown out, 100 percent. And we’ll see what happens. We’ll see whether or not we have a closure during the Biden administration. But if it’s going to take place, it’s going to take place during Biden, not during Trump.”
Trump separately told ABC News that “there won’t be anything approved unless the debt ceiling is done with,” indicating any spending deal to prevent a shutdown must address the debt limit.
“If we don’t get it, then we’re going to have a shutdown, but it’ll be a Biden shutdown, because shutdowns only [injure] the person who’s president,” he told ABC News.
Whether Republicans and Democrats would go along with such a plan, though, is far from clear. GOP lawmakers in both chambers have opposed raising the debt ceiling without spending reforms, and debates over the debt limit often give way to broader fights over the federal budget, which conservatives in Congress have said is bloated and should be reduced. Plus, Democrats still control the Senate and the White House.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Wednesday that shutting down the government would harm families and endanger services Americans rely on.
“Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country,” she said. “President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Vance ordered Republicans to shut down the government and they are threatening to do just that — while undermining communities recovering from disasters, farmers and ranchers, and community health centers.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries suggested Democrats would not go along with a plan pushed by Republicans to raise the debt limit.
“GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check. Hard pass,” the New York Democrat wrote on the social media platform Bluesky.
Jeffries also told reporters “the debt limit issue and discussion is premature at best.”
