The Israeli army said its troops shot and killed three hostages on Friday after “mistakenly” identifying them as a threat.

“During combat in Shejaiya, the IDF (army) mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat. As a result, the troops fired toward them and they were killed,” the army said in a statement.

“The IDF began reviewing the incident immediately… Immediate lessons from the event have been learned, which have been passed on to all IDF troops in the field,” it added, expressing “deep remorse over the tragic incident”.

The army identified two of the hostages as Yotam Haim, who was taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza during Hamas’s October 7 attack, and Samer El-Talalqa, taken from Kibbutz Nir Am.

It said it was withholding the third hostage’s name at the family’s request.

Hamas kidnapped around 250 hostages during its October 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,139 people, according to official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory war against the group has killed more than 18,700 people, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israeli government has repeatedly stated that bringing home all of the hostages is one of its chief war aims.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

“Friends” actor Matthew Perry died from an accidental ketamine overdose, medical examiners said Friday, concluding their investigation into the death of the beloved but troubled TV star.

Perry, who played Chandler Bing on the hit TV sitcom from 1994-2004, died at the age of 54, having been found unconscious in a swimming pool at his house in Los Angeles in October.

He had struggled for decades with addiction to drugs, including ketamine, and related serious health issues, but had reportedly been clean for 19 months prior to his passing.

“Matthew Perry’s cause of death is determined to be from the acute effects of ketamine,” the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office said in a statement.

“Contributory factors in his death include drowning, coronary artery disease and buprenorphine effects. The manner of death is accident. “

Ketamine is illegally used as a recreational drug for its numbing and hallucinogenic effects.

The drug can also be used by doctors as an anesthetic, and researchers are exploring its use as a mental health treatment.  

Perry wrote in his memoirs of how he had relied on using ketamine daily at points during his battles with addiction. He said the drug eased his pain and helped with depression.

“Has my name written all over it — they might as well have called it ‘Matty,'” he wrote, of ketamine.

“Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel. But the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel,” explained Perry.

– ‘The Big Terrible Thing’ –

“Friends,” which followed the lives of six New Yorkers navigating adulthood, dating and careers, drew a massive global following.

But even as he delivered on-air gag after gag — and earned a fortune — Perry was struggling.

He attended multiple rehabilitation clinics to combat addiction to painkillers and alcohol. In 2018 he suffered a burst colon, related to drug usage, and underwent multiple surgeries.

In his memoir “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” published last year, Perry described going through detox dozens of times. He dedicated the book to “all of the sufferers out there,” and wrote in the prologue: “I should be dead.”

“I have mostly been sober since 2001,” he wrote, “save for about sixty or seventy little mishaps over the years.”

The examiner’s report does not specify how or when Perry had consumed the fatal dose of ketamine.

But it found that trace amounts were detected in his stomach, and that prescription medications and loose pills were present at his home.

Perry was undergoing medical treatment involving ketamine — but his most recent known infusion was more than a week before his death, meaning that dose would no longer have been in his system.

The examiner’s report says the levels of ketamine in Perry’s blood were comparable to higher-range levels used as general anesthetic in surgeries, and would cause overstimulation of the heart and problems breathing.

This could have caused Perry to lapse into unconsciousness, with drowning then becoming a contributory cause of death.

Perry’s coronary artery disease, and his use of buprenorphine to treat severe pain, would have made him more vulnerable to the effects of ketamine, the report finds.

No alcohol was detected in his system by the autopsy report. Nor were there any traces of other drugs such as cocaine, heroin or fentanyl.

– ‘The 6 of us’ –

Perry’s sudden passing in October drew shocked reactions from Hollywood A-listers, his co-stars, and “Friends” fans worldwide.

“Oh boy this one has cut deep,” said Jennifer Aniston, who played Rachel on the show about six close-knit friends navigating adult life in New York.

“He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the 6 of us. This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be,” she wrote on Instagram.

“The times we had together are honestly among the favorite times of my life,” wrote Matt LeBlanc, who played Perry’s roommate and best friend on the show.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A 26-year-old woman was severely injured after her boyfriend, who is the son of a senior bureaucrat, allegedly tried to run her over with his car in Maharashtra Thane. The woman, Priya Singh, described the harrowing ordeal of how an argument resulted in her boyfriend allegedly beating her, trying to strangle her, and then asking his driver to mow her down.

The incident took place early on Monday morning near a hotel in Thane and police have registered a case against Ashwajit Gaikwad, the son of Anil Gaikwad, Managing Director at the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation.

Priya says she received a call from Ashwajit, who she has been in a relationship with for nearly 5 years, at 4 am on Tuesday asking her to join him at a family function.

“Upon reaching there I met some friends and found that my boyfriend was behaving strangely. So I asked him if everything was fine and insisted him for us to talk in private,” she said.

Priya stepped out of the function and waited for Ashwajit hoping to talk to him and defuse the tension. But he came out with his friends who started abusing her.

“My boyfriend and his friend used abusive language to which I asked my boyfriend to defend me and not abuse which led to the start of something beyond my imagination. My boyfriend slapped me, tried to strangle my neck, I tried to push him away he bit my hand, beat me, pulled my hair, and his friend out of nowhere pushed me to the ground,” she wrote on her Instagram.

But it did not end there. When she tried to collect her phone and other belongings from his car, Ashwajit asked his driver to mow her down, police said.

“The incident took place around 4.30 am on Monday near a hotel on Ghodbunder Road, where the woman had gone to meet Ashwajit Gaikwad. An argument broke out between the two. Later, when the victim collected her belongings from his car and started leaving, the one who was driving the vehicle tried to mow her down, due to which she fell down and suffered serious injuries,” a police official said.

Priya claims she was lying on the road, in pain, for nearly half an hour before a passerby stopped and called for help, which she had been unable to do as Ashwajit hadn’t returned her phone.

She was taken to a nearby hospital where she is currently undergoing treatment.

“My right leg is broken and I had to undergo surgery, had to put a rod in my right leg. I have bruises all over my body, my arms, my back, and my stomach area are deeply scrapped. I will be bedridden for a minimum of 3-4 months and after that, I will have to take support to walk for another 6 months,” Priya Singh told police in the hospital.

A Maharashtra police official said that a probe into the incident is underway and no arrest has been made so far.