Egyptian authorities along with International Committee of the Red Cross Participate in Search for Hostage Remains in Gaza
Teams from Egypt and the ICRC have been granted permission to locate the remains of deceased hostages taken during the October 7th incidents, Israeli authorities have confirmed.
The Israeli government announced that the teams have been permitted to operate past the referred to as "demarcation line" in the area controlled by Israeli forces in the Gaza territory.
The group has handed over 15 out of 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the initial stage of a US-brokered ceasefire deal, which mandates it to transfer all hostage bodies. The group stated it is now working together with officials in Egypt.
Donald Trump has cautions the organization to begin returning the remains "quickly, or the other countries involved in this great peace will take action".
An official representative said the Egyptian team has been permitted to work with the Red Cross to locate the bodies, and would use digging equipment and trucks for the search beyond the "demarcation line".
The "demarcation line" indicates the boundary running along the northern, south and eastern of Gaza that Israeli forces withdrew to, as part of the first stage of the ceasefire deal.
Previously, Israeli authorities has not authorized the access of these crews.
The Egyptian government, along with Qatari officials and Turkish authorities, is a key signatory of the Trump-brokered Gaza peace plan, which was signed in the coastal city of the resort town earlier this month.
The development will be welcomed by relatives, desperate to provide a proper burial.
The ICRC has already been heavily involved in the return of hostages.
Hamas does not hand over its captives - living or deceased - straight to the IDF, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn escorts them through the territory and hands them on to the Israeli military.
But the arrival of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza Strip is a recent development.
After more than 24 months of intense bombardment by Israel, the United Nations estimates that as much as eighty-four percent of the area has been reduced to rubble.
The group says it is doing its best to recover 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 the weekend, an official representative said that Hamas knew where the remains were.
"If the group made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our captives," the spokesperson commented.
The former president posted on his Truth Social platform on the weekend that action would be taken if the bodies of the deceased hostages were not returned promptly.
"Some of the remains are hard to reach, but others they can return now and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their disarming," he said.
He added: "Let's see what they do over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely."
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On Sunday, the Israeli leader said Israel would decide which foreign forces it would permit as part of a planned international force in Gaza to help maintain the truce under the former president's initiative.
"We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that we will decide which forces are not acceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate," he declared speaking at the beginning of a government session.
On the end of the week, the American diplomat said "numerous nations" had volunteered to be part of the force - but noted Israel would have to be comfortable with participants.
This appeared to be a reference to the Turkish government, amid accounts Israeli officials had rejected the country's participation.
It was still uncertain, however, how such a force could be deployed without an agreement with Hamas.
The Israeli military initiated a armed operation in the territory in following the incidents of October 7th, in which militants associated with the group killed about twelve hundred people and took two hundred fifty-one additional persons as captives.
At least sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been lost their lives in military actions in Gaza from that time, according to the area's health authorities under the group's control.