Egypt and International Committee of the Red Cross Participate in Effort for Captive Bodies in Gaza Strip
Units from Egypt and the ICRC have been authorized to locate the bodies of deceased hostages taken during the 7 October attacks, Israeli authorities have verified.
The Israeli government announced that the teams have been permitted to search past the referred to as "demarcation line" in the region under the control of Israeli forces in the Gaza territory.
Hamas has handed over fifteen out of 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered truce agreement, which mandates it to hand over all remains of captives. The group stated it is now working together with Egyptian authorities.
The former US president has warned the organization to begin returning the bodies "quickly, or the other countries involved in this significant peace will take action".
An official representative said the crew from Egypt has been authorized to work with the Red Cross to locate the bodies, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the search beyond the "demarcation line".
The "yellow line" indicates the border running along the northern, southern and eastern of Gaza that Israeli forces pulled back to, as part of the initial phase of the ceasefire deal.
Previously, Israel has not authorized the access 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 signed in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in recent weeks.
The development will be welcomed by relatives, desperate to give them a dignified funeral.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the return of captives.
The organization does not transfer its detainees - living or deceased - straight to the IDF, but instead to the ICRC, which in turn escorts them through Gaza and transfers them to the Israeli military.
But the entry of Egyptian excavation teams inside the Gaza Strip is new.
After more than two years of intense bombardment by Israel, the UN calculates that as much as 84% of the territory has been reduced to rubble.
Hamas claims it is making every effort to recover hostage bodies, but it faces difficulty finding them under debris of buildings destroyed by the IDF in the region.
It is now coordinating with the officials in Egypt.
On Sunday, an official representative said that the organization was aware of where the bodies were.
"If the group put in greater work, they would be able to recover the bodies of our hostages," the representative said.
Trump posted on his social media account on the weekend that measures would be implemented if the bodies of the deceased hostages were not returned quickly.
"Some of the bodies are hard to reach, but the rest they can hand over at present and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Maybe it has do with their disarming," he said.
He continued: "We will observe what they do over the coming two days. I am watching this very closely."
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On the weekend, the Israeli leader announced Israel would decide which international troops it would allow as part of a planned 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 foreign troops that we will determine which units are not acceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will proceed," he declared speaking at the beginning of a cabinet meeting.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said "numerous countries" had offered to be part of the force - but added Israeli authorities would have to be satisfied with those taking part.
This seemed like a allusion to the Turkish government, amid reports Israel had rejected the country's participation.
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 response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about 1,200 people and captured two hundred fifty-one additional persons as captives.
No fewer than sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the area's health authorities under the group's control.