🔗 Share this article

Units from Egypt and the ICRC have been authorized to search for the bodies of deceased hostages captured during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have confirmed.

The Israeli government announced that the teams have been permitted to search beyond the referred to as "yellow line" in the region under the control of Israeli forces in Gaza.

The group has handed over fifteen out of twenty-eight hostages who lost their lives under the first phase of a American-mediated ceasefire deal, which requires it to transfer all remains of captives. The group stated it is now working together with officials in Egypt.

The former US president has warned the organization to start return the bodies "quickly, or the other countries participating in this significant peace will take action".

An Israeli spokesperson said the Egyptian team has been authorized to work with the ICRC to find the bodies, and would use excavator machines and vehicles for the search beyond the "yellow line".

The "yellow line" marks the boundary running along the north, southern and eastern of the Gaza territory that Israeli forces withdrew to, as part of the first stage of the ceasefire deal.

Until now, Israel has not approved the access of such teams.

Egypt, along with Qatari officials and Turkish authorities, is a principal participant of the Trump-brokered peace initiative for Gaza, which was ratified in the coastal city of the resort town in recent weeks.

The news will be welcomed by family members, eager to give them a dignified funeral.

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

Hamas does not transfer its captives - alive or deceased - straight to the Israel Defense Forces, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn escorts them through the territory and transfers them to the Israeli military.

But the entry of digging crews from Egypt 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 area has been reduced to rubble.

Hamas says it is doing its best to retrieve hostage bodies, but it encounters challenges finding them under debris of buildings destroyed by the Israeli military in the region.

It is now coordinating with the Egyptian authorities.

On Sunday, an Israeli government spokesperson stated that the organization was aware of where the remains were.

"If the group made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our captives," the spokesperson commented.

Trump shared on his social media account on Saturday that measures would be implemented if the remains of the deceased hostages were not handed back quickly.

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

He added: "Let's see what they do over the coming two days. I am monitoring the situation very closely."

• Gaza minors dying as they await Israel to enable evacuations
• Rubio states lots of countries prepared to participate in the region's peacekeeping unit
• Recent photographs show Israeli control line deeper into the territory than expected

On the weekend, the Israeli leader said the country would determine which foreign forces it would allow as part of a planned international force in the region to help maintain the ceasefire under Trump's plan.

"We are in control of our security, and we have also stated explicitly regarding foreign troops that we will decide which units are unacceptable to us, and this is how we function and will proceed," he said talking at the start of a government session.

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 noted Israel would have to be comfortable with participants.

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

It remained unclear, however, how this contingent could be stationed without an agreement with Hamas.

The Israeli military launched a military campaign in Gaza 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 others as hostages.

No fewer than 68,519 have been lost their lives in military actions in Gaza since then, according to the area's Hamas-run health ministry.