Israeli colonel says Hannibal Directive was possibly deployed on 7 October

Israeli air force colonel Nof Erez told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the Israeli army may have deployed the Hannibal Directive on 7 October, potentially striking Israeli hostages as they were being taken back to Gaza by Palestinian fighters. He said that if the directive had been used, it would have been intentional and described the situation as a "Mass Hannibal," noting that soldiers are normally trained to deploy the protocol only in cases involving a single vehicle with multiple hostages. The Hannibal Directive, a controversial military protocol that requires kidnappings of Israelis to be stopped "by all means," including the use of force against their own, was officially revoked in 2016. In the few known cases where the directive was deployed, only one Israeli soldier survived, as the policy was often interpreted as preferring to kill their own rather than leave them captive.