A hostage in Gaza is rescued by Israel after 326 days of captivity
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00:00A former hostage, Qaid Farhan Al-Qadi, is escorted by soldiers to a medical centre in
00:06southern Israel, where he's reunited with family.
00:10Seen here in a hospital gown, the 52-year-old's condition is said to be stable after he was
00:15rescued from Gaza by the Israeli army.
00:19He's lost weight.
00:20Look, this is after 10 months of being inside a tunnel.
00:23He's come back from the dead.
00:26Describe to me the moment you first saw him.
00:29Only tears, my brother, only tears from me and from him, meeting after all this time
00:33when it felt like there was no more chance of seeing him back here again.
00:38The Israeli army says they rescued Al-Qadi in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip.
00:43They said the father of 11 is one of eight hostages to be rescued alive since the start
00:47of the war and the first from an underground tunnel.
00:51Al-Qadi was working as a guard at a packing factory in a kibbutz on October 7th and was
00:56one of eight members of Israel's Arab Bedouin minority to be abducted by Hamas.
01:01The Israeli Prime Minister hailed the rescue, saying it showed the country's approach was
01:05working.
01:06We are working tirelessly to bring all our hostages back in two main ways, through negotiations
01:12and through rescue operations.
01:14Both approaches require our military presence on the ground and continuous military pressure
01:19on Hamas.
01:20We will continue to operate in this manner until we bring everyone home.
01:25A key sticking point in truce talks with Hamas has been Israel's insistence on keeping
01:29control of the so-called Philadelphia Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, while the militant
01:35group and Egypt want Israeli troops to fully withdraw from Gaza.
01:40Israeli campaign group Hostages and Missing Families Forum described Al-Qadi's rescue
01:45as miraculous, but said that a ceasefire and negotiated deal remained the only way forward
01:50to ensure the return of the other hostages.
01:53104 Israelis are still captive in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.