Turkey has condemned Israel's operation to free its hostages in the Gaza Strip as a "barbaric attack" and accused Israel of war crimes.
"With this latest barbaric attack, Israel has added a new one to the list of war crimes it has committed in Gaza," the Foreign Ministry in Ankara said on Sunday, without mentioning the hostage rescue.
On Saturday, Israel's military freed four people kidnapped from Israel during the October 7 massacres. They were found in the centre of the Gaza Strip after eight months of being held captive.
There were reportedly heavy air strikes and artillery fire that accompanied the rescue mission. Television pictures showed massive casualties and an overwhelmed hospital.
The Hamas media office said 210 Palestinians were killed and around 400 injured in Nuseirat, one of the locations where the operation took place. The information could not initially be independently verified.
The Israeli army said it was verifying the reports. Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said there were fewer than 100 casualties.
The Hamas-controlled health authority and medical sources in the Gaza Strip previously spoke of 55 deaths.
Meanwhile in Israel, families whose loved ones have been either killed by Hamas or who remain in captivity in Gaza criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for meeting with freed hostages but not with families of other victims.
A leading opposition politician joined in the criticism.
"When you are prime minister, you are the prime minister of successes and defeats," opposition leader Yair Lapid told Israel's Kan channel on Sunday. "To be prime minister only when everything works out and to disappear when everything doesn't go the way you want, that's pathetic."
Netanyahu met with four hostages freed from the Gaza Strip in hospital on Saturday - during the Sabbath or Jewish day of rest, - and had his picture taken.
According to media reports, however, families of Israelis killed during the Hamas massacre on October 7 and relatives of hostages who were killed were angered that neither Netanyahu nor other government representatives had made contact with them.
"A prime minister with moral values would have called to comfort and strengthen (us). And to apologize for what happened on his watch," the father of a soldier killed on October 7 wrote on X.
Asked about his opinion of Netanyahu, the father said: "I despise him, a shabby person."
