Egyptian authorities along with Red Cross Join Effort for Captive Remains in Gaza Strip
Teams from Egyptian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been authorized to locate the bodies of hostages who perished captured during the October 7th incidents, officials in Israel have confirmed.
The Israeli government announced that the teams have been permitted to search past the referred to as "demarcation line" in the area under the control of Israeli forces in the Gaza territory.
Hamas has transferred fifteen out of 28 hostages who lost their lives under the initial stage of a US-brokered truce agreement, which mandates it to transfer all hostage bodies. The organization stated it is now coordinating with officials in Egypt.
Donald Trump has cautions Hamas to start return the bodies "quickly, or the additional nations involved in this great peace will take action".
An official representative said the crew from Egypt has been authorized to work with the Red Cross to locate the remains, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the operation past the "demarcation line".
The "demarcation line" marks the boundary running along the north, south and east of the Gaza territory that Israel withdrew to, as part of the initial phase of the truce agreement.
Until now, Israeli authorities has not authorized the entry of such teams.
Egypt, along with Qatari officials and Turkey, is a principal participant of the Trump-brokered Gaza peace plan, which was ratified in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in recent weeks.
The development will be greeted positively by relatives, desperate to provide a dignified funeral.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the return of captives.
The organization does not hand over its captives - living or deceased - straight to the Israel Defense Forces, but rather to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through Gaza and transfers them to the IDF.
But the entry of Egyptian excavation teams inside the Gaza Strip is a recent development.
After more than 24 months of heavy shelling by Israel, the UN estimates that as much as eighty-four percent of the territory has been destroyed completely.
Hamas claims it is making every effort to retrieve remains of captives, but it faces difficulty finding them under rubble of structures bombed out by the IDF in Gaza.
It is now working in coordination with the officials in Egypt.
On Sunday, an official representative stated that Hamas knew where the bodies were.
"If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our captives," the spokesperson said.
The former president posted on his social media account on the weekend that action would be implemented if the bodies of the deceased hostages were not handed back promptly.
"Some of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can hand over at present and, for some reason, they are not. Maybe it has do with their demilitarization," he said.
He added: "Let's see what they accomplish over the coming two days. I am watching this with great attention."
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On the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country would determine which foreign forces it would allow as part of a planned international force in Gaza to help secure the truce under Trump's plan.
"We are in control of our security, and we have also stated explicitly regarding foreign troops that Israel will decide which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will proceed," he declared speaking at the start of a government session.
On the end of the week, the American diplomat indicated "numerous countries" had volunteered to be involved in the force - but noted Israeli authorities would have to be comfortable with those taking part.
This appeared to be a reference to the Turkish government, amid reports Israel had rejected the country's participation.
It remained unclear, however, how such a force could be stationed without an understanding with Hamas.
The Israeli military initiated a military campaign in the territory in following the 7 October 2023 attack, in which militants associated with the group killed about 1,200 individuals and took two hundred fifty-one additional persons as captives.
No fewer than sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in military actions in Gaza from that time, according to the territory's health authorities under the group's control.