Is­rael on Sat­ur­day car­ried out its largest hostage res­cue op­er­a­tion since the war with Hamas be­gan, tak­ing four to safe­ty out of cen­tral Gaza as heavy fight­ing con­tin­ued there. At least 94 dead Pales­tini­ans, in­clud­ing chil­dren, were brought to lo­cal hos­pi­tals, a health of­fi­cial said.

Is­raelis were ju­bi­lant as the army said it res­cued Noa Arga­mani, 25; Al­mog Meir Jan, 21; An­drey Ko­zlov, 27; and Shlo­mi Ziv, 40, in a day­time op­er­a­tion in the heart of Nu­seirat, raid­ing two lo­ca­tions at once and un­der fire. All were well, the mil­i­tary said. They were tak­en by he­li­copter for med­ical checks and re­unions with loved ones af­ter 246 days held.

Arga­mani had been one of the most wide­ly rec­og­nized hostages af­ter be­ing tak­en, like the three oth­ers, from a mu­sic fes­ti­val. The video of her ab­duc­tion was among the first to sur­face, with her be­tween two men on a mo­tor­cy­cle as she screamed, “Don’t kill me!”

Her moth­er, Li­o­ra, has stage four brain can­cer and in April re­leased a video plead­ing to see her daugh­ter be­fore she dies.

An elat­ed Arga­mani spoke by phone with Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu. In a video mes­sage re­leased by the gov­ern­ment, she tells him she is “very ex­cit­ed,” say­ing she hasn’t heard He­brew in so long.

Ne­tanyahu in a state­ment said “Is­rael does not sur­ren­der to ter­ror­ism and acts with cre­ativ­i­ty and bold­ness that knows no bounds to bring home our ab­ductees.” He vowed to con­tin­ue the fight­ing un­til all are freed.

The op­er­a­tion was “dar­ing in na­ture, planned bril­liant­ly, and ex­e­cut­ed in an ex­tra­or­di­nary fash­ion,” De­fense Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant said.

The bod­ies of near­ly 100 Pales­tini­ans killed were tak­en to Al-Aqsa Hos­pi­tal, where spokesper­son Khalil De­gran told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press more than 100 wound­ed al­so ar­rived. AP re­porters saw dozens of bod­ies brought from the Nu­seirat and Deir al-Bal­ah ar­eas, as smoke rose in the dis­tance and ar­mored ve­hi­cles rolled by.

A ba­by was among the dead. Small chil­dren wailed, cov­ered in blood. Bod­ies were placed on the ground out­side, their feet bare, as more wound­ed were rushed in.

“My two cousins were killed, and two oth­er cousins were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured. They did not com­mit any sin. They were sit­ting at home,” one rel­a­tive said in the chaos.

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said it had at­tacked “threats to our forces in the area.” The mil­i­tary said one com­man­do died from his wounds.

A U.S. hostage cell pro­vid­ed ad­vice and sup­port through­out the process of lo­cat­ing and res­cu­ing the hostages, ac­cord­ing to a Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial. The of­fi­cial, who was not au­tho­rized to com­ment and re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, de­clined to of­fer fur­ther de­tail on the Amer­i­can in­volve­ment. The hostage cells are mul­ti-agency teams.

“We won’t stop work­ing un­til all the hostages come home and a cease-fire is reached,” U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said.

Hamas took some 250 hostages dur­ing the Oct. 7 at­tack that killed about 1,200 peo­ple. About half were re­leased in a week­long cease-fire in No­vem­ber. About 120 hostages re­main, with 43 pro­nounced dead. Sur­vivors in­clude about 15 women, two chil­dren un­der the age of 5 and two men in their 80s.

Sat­ur­day’s hostage re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion brings the to­tal of res­cued cap­tives to sev­en. Two men were res­cued in Feb­ru­ary and a woman was res­cued in the af­ter­math of the Oc­to­ber at­tack. Is­raeli troops have re­cov­ered at least 16 bod­ies of hostages, ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment.

The lat­est res­cue was ex­pect­ed to lift spir­its in Is­rael at a time when the war is drag­ging on and di­vi­sions are deep­en­ing over the best way to bring hostages home.

It was un­clear what ef­fect it might have on ap­par­ent­ly stalled cease-fire ef­forts. U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken will re­turn to the Mid­dle East next week, seek­ing a break­through.

“The hostage re­lease and cease-fire deal that is now on the ta­ble would se­cure the re­lease of all the re­main­ing hostages to­geth­er with se­cu­ri­ty as­sur­ances for Is­rael and re­lief for the in­no­cent civil­ians in Gaza,” na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Jake Sul­li­van said in a state­ment.

Ne­tanyahu faces grow­ing pres­sure to end the fight­ing in Gaza. Many Is­raelis urge him to em­brace a deal Biden an­nounced last month, but far-right al­lies threat­en to col­lapse his gov­ern­ment if he does.

In­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure al­so mounts on Is­rael to lim­it civil­ian blood­shed in its war in Gaza, which reached its eighth month on Fri­day with more than 36,700 Pales­tini­ans killed, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which does not dis­tin­guish be­tween fight­ers and civil­ians. Pales­tini­ans face wide­spread hunger be­cause fight­ing and Is­raeli re­stric­tions have large­ly cut off the flow of aid.

Is­rael is in­ten­si­fy­ing op­er­a­tions across cen­tral Gaza, where the hostages were res­cued. On Thurs­day, an Is­raeli airstrike hit a U.N.-run school com­pound in Nu­seirat, killing over 33 peo­ple in­side the school, in­clud­ing three women and nine chil­dren.

Is­rael said some 30 mil­i­tants were in­side at the time and on Fri­day re­leased the names of 17 mil­i­tants it said were killed. How­ev­er, on­ly nine of those names matched with records of the dead from the hos­pi­tal morgue.

One of the al­leged mil­i­tants was an 8-year-old boy, ac­cord­ing to hos­pi­tal records.

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary on Sat­ur­day as­sert­ed that “Hamas is a ter­ror or­ga­ni­za­tion that of­ten us­es fake doc­u­ments dis­guis­ing ter­ror­ists as women or chil­dren.”