Egypt along with Red Cross Participate in Search for Hostage Bodies in Gaza
Units from Egypt and the ICRC have been authorized to search for the bodies of deceased hostages taken during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have verified.
The Israeli government announced that the teams have been permitted to operate beyond the referred to as "demarcation line" in the area controlled by Israeli forces in the Gaza territory.
The group has handed over fifteen out of twenty-eight hostages who lost their lives under the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal, which mandates it to hand over all remains of captives. The organization said it is now working together with officials in Egypt.
Donald Trump has cautions the organization to start return the bodies "quickly, or the additional nations involved in this significant peace will intervene".
An official representative said the crew from Egypt has been permitted to work with the Red Cross to locate the bodies, and would use excavator machines and vehicles for the operation past the "yellow line".
The "demarcation line" indicates the boundary running along the north, southern and eastern of the Gaza territory that Israeli forces pulled back to, as part of the first stage of the truce agreement.
Until now, Israel has not approved the access of these crews.
Egypt, along with Qatari officials and Turkey, is a principal participant of the Trump-brokered peace initiative for Gaza, which was ratified in the Egyptian resort of the resort town in recent weeks.
The development will be greeted positively by relatives, desperate to provide a proper burial.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the return of captives.
The organization does not transfer its captives - living or deceased - directly to the Israel Defense Forces, but rather to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through Gaza and hands them on to the IDF.
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 territory has been destroyed completely.
Hamas says it is doing its best to retrieve remains of captives, but it faces difficulty locating them under rubble of buildings bombed out by the Israeli military in the region.
It is now coordinating with the officials in Egypt.
On Sunday, an official representative said that Hamas was aware of where the bodies were.
"If Hamas put in greater work, they would be able to recover the bodies of our hostages," the representative said.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that action would be taken if the bodies of the hostages who died were not handed back quickly.
"Some of the remains are hard to reach, but others they can hand over now and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Maybe 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 with great attention."
- Palestinian children losing their lives as they await Israel to permit relocations
- Rubio says many countries willing to join the region's peacekeeping unit
- Recent photographs reveal demarcation zone further 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 planned international force in Gaza to help maintain the truce under Trump's plan.
"We are in command of our safety, and we have also stated explicitly regarding international forces that Israel will decide which forces are not acceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will proceed," he declared speaking at the start of a government session.
On Friday, the American diplomat said "numerous countries" had volunteered to be involved in the contingent - but added Israeli authorities would have to be comfortable with those taking part.
This appeared to be a reference to Turkey, amid accounts Israel had rejected the country's involvement.
It remained unclear, however, how this contingent could be deployed without an understanding with Hamas.
The Israeli military launched a military campaign in Gaza in following the incidents of October 7th, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about 1,200 individuals and took two hundred fifty-one additional persons as hostages.
At least 68,519 have been lost their lives in military actions in Gaza since then, according to the area's health authorities under the group's control.