🔗 Share this article

Units from Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to locate the bodies of deceased hostages taken during the 7 October attacks, Israeli authorities have verified.

The authorities in Israel stated that the teams have been permitted to operate beyond the referred to as "demarcation line" in the area controlled by military personnel in Gaza.

The group has transferred 15 out of twenty-eight hostages who lost their lives under the initial stage of a American-mediated ceasefire deal, which requires it to hand over all hostage bodies. The organization said 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 intervene".

An Israeli spokesperson said the crew from Egypt has been permitted to collaborate with the Red Cross to locate the remains, and would use digging equipment and trucks for the search past the "yellow line".

The "yellow line" indicates the boundary running along the north, southern and east of the Gaza territory that Israel pulled back to, as part of the initial phase of the truce agreement.

Until now, Israeli authorities has not authorized the entry of these crews.

The Egyptian government, along with Qatari officials and Turkey, is a principal participant of the Trump-brokered Gaza peace plan, which was signed in the coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month.

The development will be greeted positively by relatives, desperate to give them a dignified funeral.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been deeply engaged in the repatriation of captives.

The organization does not hand over its detainees - alive or deceased - directly to the IDF, but instead to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through the territory and hands them on to the IDF.

But the arrival of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza Strip is a recent development.

After more than 24 months of intense bombardment by Israel, the United Nations estimates that as much as eighty-four percent of the area has been reduced to rubble.

Hamas claims it is doing its best to recover remains of captives, but it encounters challenges locating them under rubble of buildings bombed out by the Israeli military in the region.

It is now working in coordination with the officials in Egypt.

On the weekend, an official representative stated that Hamas was aware of where the bodies were.

"If the group put in greater work, they would be able to recover the remains of our captives," the representative commented.

The former president shared on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that measures would be implemented if the remains of the hostages who died were not handed back promptly.

"Some of the remains are hard to reach, but the rest they can return at present and, for some reason, they are not. Perhaps it has do with their demilitarization," he said.

Trump continued: "We will observe what they do over the coming two days. I am watching this very closely."

• Palestinian minors losing their lives as they await Israel to enable relocations
• Rubio states lots of nations prepared to join the region's peacekeeping unit
• New images reveal demarcation zone deeper into Gaza than expected

On the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the country would determine which international troops it would permit as part of a proposed international force in Gaza to help maintain the truce under the former president's initiative.

"We are in command of our safety, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will determine which units are not acceptable to us, and this is how we function and will continue to operate," he said speaking at the start of a cabinet meeting.

On the end of the week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated "a lot of nations" had offered to be part of the force - but added Israeli authorities would have to be satisfied with participants.

This seemed like a allusion to the Turkish government, amid accounts Israel had rejected the nation's involvement.

It remained unclear, however, how such a force could be deployed without an understanding with Hamas.

The Israeli military launched a armed operation in the territory in response to the incidents of October 7th, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about 1,200 individuals and took two hundred fifty-one others as captives.

No fewer than 68,519 have been killed in Israeli attacks in the region from that time, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.