Egyptian authorities and Red Cross Join Effort for Captive Remains in Gaza Strip
Teams from Egyptian authorities and the ICRC have been granted permission to locate the bodies of deceased hostages taken during the October 7th incidents, officials in Israel have confirmed.
The Israeli government announced that the teams have been allowed to operate beyond the referred to as "yellow line" in the area controlled by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The group has transferred 15 out of 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the initial stage of a American-mediated truce agreement, which requires it to transfer all hostage bodies. The organization said it is now coordinating with Egyptian authorities.
Donald Trump has cautions Hamas to begin returning the remains "promptly, or the other countries involved in this great peace will intervene".
An official representative said the crew from Egypt has been authorized to work with the ICRC to find the remains, and would use digging equipment and vehicles for the operation past the "yellow line".
The "demarcation line" indicates the border running along the northern, south and eastern of Gaza that Israel withdrew to, as part of the first stage of the ceasefire deal.
Until now, Israeli authorities has not authorized the entry of these crews.
Egypt, along with Qatar and Turkey, is a principal participant of the Trump-brokered peace initiative for Gaza, which was ratified in the coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month.
The development will be welcomed by relatives, desperate to give them a proper burial.
The ICRC has already been heavily involved in the repatriation of captives.
The organization does not transfer its detainees - alive or deceased - directly to the Israel Defense Forces, but instead to the Red Cross, which in turn escorts them through Gaza and transfers them 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 heavy shelling by Israeli forces, the United Nations estimates that as much as 84% of the area has been destroyed completely.
Hamas says it is doing its best to recover remains of captives, but it faces difficulty locating them under debris of structures bombed out by the IDF in the region.
It is now coordinating with the Egyptian authorities.
On the weekend, an official representative stated that the organization was aware of where the remains were.
"If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our hostages," the representative commented.
The former president posted on his social media account on Saturday that measures would be taken if the remains of the hostages who died were not handed back quickly.
"A portion of the remains are hard to reach, but others they can return now and, for some reason, they are not. Perhaps it has do with their demilitarization," he remarked.
He 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 announced the country would determine which foreign forces it would allow as part of a planned international force in the region to help maintain the truce under Trump's plan.
"We are in control of our safety, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that we will determine which units are unacceptable to us, and this is how we function and will continue to operate," he declared talking at the start of a cabinet meeting.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said "numerous nations" had volunteered to be part of the force - but noted Israel would have to be satisfied with those taking part.
This appeared to be a allusion to the Turkish government, amid reports Israeli officials had rejected the country's involvement.
It was still uncertain, however, how such a force could be stationed without an understanding with Hamas.
The Israeli military initiated a military campaign in the territory in following the 7 October 2023 attack, 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 sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been lost their lives in Israeli attacks in Gaza from that time, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.