Egypt and International Committee of the Red Cross Join Search for Hostage Bodies in Gaza Strip
Units from Egyptian authorities and the ICRC have been authorized to locate the remains of deceased hostages taken during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have confirmed.
The authorities in Israel stated that the crews have been permitted to operate beyond the referred to as "yellow line" in the area controlled by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Hamas has transferred fifteen out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the initial stage of a US-brokered truce agreement, which mandates it to hand over all hostage bodies. The group said it is now coordinating with Egyptian authorities.
The former US president has cautions Hamas to begin returning the bodies "quickly, or the other countries participating in this significant peace will take action".
An official representative said the crew from Egypt has been permitted to work with the ICRC to locate the remains, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the operation beyond the "yellow line".
The "yellow line" indicates the boundary running along the northern, southern and eastern of Gaza that Israeli forces pulled back to, as part of the first stage of the truce agreement.
Until now, Israeli authorities has not authorized the access of these crews.
The Egyptian government, along with Qatar and Turkish authorities, is a principal participant of the mediated by Trump peace initiative for Gaza, which was ratified in the coastal city of the resort town earlier this month.
The news will be welcomed by family members, eager to provide a proper burial.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the return of hostages.
Hamas does not transfer its detainees - alive or deceased - directly to the IDF, but rather to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through the territory and hands them on to the IDF.
But the arrival of Egyptian excavation teams inside the Gaza Strip is a recent development.
After more than two years of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the UN calculates that as much as eighty-four percent of the area has been reduced to rubble.
Hamas claims it is making every effort to retrieve hostage bodies, but it faces difficulty locating them under rubble of structures destroyed by the IDF in Gaza.
It is now working in coordination with the officials in Egypt.
On the weekend, an Israeli government spokesperson stated that Hamas was aware of where the bodies were.
"If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our captives," the spokesperson commented.
Trump shared on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that action would be implemented if the remains of the hostages who died were not handed back promptly.
"A portion of the remains are hard to reach, but the rest they can return now and, for some reason, they are not. Maybe it has to do with their demilitarization," he said.
Trump continued: "Let's see what they accomplish over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely."
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On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the country would decide which foreign forces it would permit as part of a proposed multinational contingent in the region to help maintain the ceasefire under Trump's plan.
"We are in command of our security, 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 function and will continue to operate," he said talking at the beginning of a government session.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated "numerous countries" had volunteered to be part of the force - but added Israel would have to be satisfied with participants.
This appeared to be a allusion to the Turkish government, amid reports Israeli officials had vetoed the country's participation.
It was still uncertain, however, how such a force could be stationed without an agreement with Hamas.
The Israeli military 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 251 additional persons as captives.
No fewer than 68,519 have been killed in Israeli attacks in the region since then, according to the territory's health authorities under the group's control.
