Egypt and International Committee of the Red Cross Participate in Effort for Captive Bodies in Gaza
Units from Egyptian authorities and the ICRC have been authorized to locate the bodies of deceased hostages captured during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have verified.
The Israeli government stated that the teams have been permitted to search past the so-called "yellow line" in the area controlled by military personnel in the Gaza territory.
Hamas has transferred fifteen out of twenty-eight hostages who lost their lives under the initial stage of a US-brokered ceasefire deal, which requires it to transfer all hostage bodies. The organization stated it is now coordinating with Egyptian authorities.
Donald Trump has cautions the organization to begin returning the remains "quickly, or the other countries involved in this great peace will intervene".
An official representative said the crew from Egypt has been authorized to collaborate with the ICRC to find the remains, and would use digging equipment and vehicles for the operation beyond the "demarcation line".
The "demarcation line" marks the border running along the north, south and eastern of Gaza that Israel pulled back to, as part of the initial phase of the truce agreement.
Until now, Israel has not authorized the entry of such teams.
The Egyptian government, along with Qatari officials and Turkey, is a principal participant of the mediated by Trump peace initiative for Gaza, which was ratified in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month.
The development will be welcomed by family members, eager to give them a proper burial.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the repatriation of captives.
Hamas does not transfer its captives - alive or deceased - directly to the Israel Defense Forces, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn accompanies them through the territory and hands them on 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 intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the UN calculates that as much as eighty-four percent of the area has been destroyed completely.
The group says it is making every effort to retrieve remains of captives, but it faces difficulty finding them under debris of buildings bombed out by the Israeli military in Gaza.
It is now working in coordination with the officials in Egypt.
On Sunday, an official representative stated that the organization knew where the remains were.
"If the group made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our hostages," the representative said.
Trump shared on his Truth Social platform on the weekend that measures would be implemented if the remains of the hostages who died were not handed back promptly.
"A portion of the remains are difficult to access, but others they can hand over now and, for some reason, they are not. Maybe it has do with their demilitarization," he remarked.
Trump added: "We will observe what they do over the coming two days. I am monitoring the situation very closely."
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On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would decide which foreign forces it would allow as part of a planned international force in the region to help secure the ceasefire under Trump's plan.
"We are in command of our safety, and we have also made it clear regarding foreign troops that Israel will decide which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate," he declared talking at the beginning of a cabinet meeting.
On the end of the week, the American diplomat indicated "numerous countries" had offered to be involved in the contingent - but added Israeli authorities would have to be satisfied with those taking part.
This seemed like a reference to Turkey, amid reports Israel had rejected the nation's involvement.
It remained unclear, however, how such a force could be stationed without an agreement with Hamas.
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in following the incidents of October 7th, in which militants associated with the group took the lives of about twelve hundred individuals and took two hundred fifty-one additional persons as hostages.
At least sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health authorities under the group's control.