Egypt along with International Committee of the Red Cross Participate in Search for Hostage Bodies in Gaza
Teams from Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to locate the remains of deceased hostages taken during the October 7th incidents, officials in Israel have confirmed.
The authorities in Israel stated that the teams have been allowed to search beyond the referred to as "demarcation line" in the area under the control of military personnel in the Gaza territory.
The group has handed over fifteen out of 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the initial stage of a American-mediated truce agreement, which mandates it to hand over all remains of captives. The organization said it is now coordinating with officials in Egypt.
Donald Trump has cautions Hamas to begin returning the remains "promptly, or the other countries participating in this significant peace will take action".
An official representative indicated the Egyptian team has been authorized to work with the Red Cross to locate the bodies, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the search past the "demarcation line".
The "yellow line" indicates the boundary running along the northern, southern and east of the Gaza territory that Israel withdrew to, as part of the initial phase of the truce agreement.
Until now, Israel has not approved the entry of these crews.
The Egyptian government, along with Qatar and Turkish authorities, is a key signatory of the mediated by Trump Gaza peace plan, which was ratified in the coastal city of the resort town earlier this month.
The development will be welcomed by relatives, desperate to give them a proper burial.
The ICRC has already been deeply engaged in the return of captives.
The organization does not transfer its captives - living or deceased - straight to the Israel Defense Forces, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn accompanies them through Gaza and transfers them to the Israeli military.
But the arrival of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza Strip is new.
After more than 24 months of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the UN estimates that as much as eighty-four percent of the area has been reduced to rubble.
The group claims it is doing its best to recover remains of captives, but it encounters challenges finding them under debris of structures destroyed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
It is now working in coordination with the officials in Egypt.
On Sunday, an official representative said that Hamas was aware of where the remains were.
"If Hamas put in greater work, they would be able to recover the remains of our captives," the spokesperson commented.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on the weekend that action would be implemented if the remains of the deceased hostages were not returned quickly.
"A portion of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can return now and, for some reason, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their demilitarization," he remarked.
Trump added: "We will observe what they accomplish over the next 48 hours. 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 permit as part of a proposed multinational contingent in the region to help maintain the truce under Trump's plan.
"We are in command of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will decide which units are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will proceed," he declared talking at the beginning of a cabinet meeting.
On Friday, the American diplomat indicated "a lot of nations" had volunteered to be part of the contingent - but noted Israel would have to be satisfied with participants.
This appeared to be a reference to the Turkish government, amid accounts Israeli officials had rejected the country's involvement.
It was still uncertain, however, how this contingent could be deployed without an agreement with Hamas.
The Israeli military initiated a military campaign in Gaza in following the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about twelve hundred people and captured two hundred fifty-one additional persons as hostages.
At least sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in military actions in Gaza from that time, according to the area's health authorities under the group's control.