Egypt and International Committee of the Red Cross Join Search for Captive Bodies in Gaza Strip
Teams from Egyptian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to locate the remains of deceased hostages captured during the October 7th incidents, officials in Israel have confirmed.
The Israeli government stated that the teams have been allowed to operate beyond the so-called "yellow line" in the region controlled by military personnel in the Gaza territory.
The group has handed over fifteen out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the initial stage of a US-brokered ceasefire deal, 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 the organization to start return 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 collaborate with the Red Cross to find the bodies, and would use digging equipment and trucks for the operation past the "demarcation line".
The "demarcation line" indicates the boundary running along the north, southern and eastern of Gaza that Israel pulled back to, as part of the initial phase of the truce agreement.
Previously, Israeli authorities has not approved the access of these crews.
Egypt, along with Qatar and Turkish authorities, is a principal participant of the Trump-brokered Gaza peace plan, which was signed in the Egyptian resort of the resort town in recent weeks.
The development will be welcomed by family members, eager to provide a dignified funeral.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the repatriation of hostages.
Hamas does not hand over its detainees - alive or deceased - straight to the IDF, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn accompanies them through Gaza and transfers them 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 territory has been destroyed completely.
The group claims it is making every effort to retrieve hostage bodies, but it faces difficulty finding them under rubble of structures bombed out by the Israeli military in Gaza.
It is now coordinating with the officials in Egypt.
On Sunday, an Israeli government spokesperson stated that the organization knew where the bodies were.
"If the group put in greater work, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our captives," the representative commented.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that action would be taken if the remains of the deceased hostages were not handed back quickly.
"A portion of the bodies are difficult to access, but the rest they can return now and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Maybe it has do with their demilitarization," he remarked.
Trump continued: "We will observe what they accomplish over the next 48 hours. I am watching this with great attention."
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On Sunday, the Israeli leader announced Israel would decide which international troops it would permit as part of a planned multinational contingent in Gaza to help maintain the truce under the former president's initiative.
"We are in command of our security, and we have also stated explicitly regarding international forces that Israel 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 government session.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated "numerous countries" had volunteered to be involved in the contingent - but noted Israeli authorities would have to be satisfied with those taking part.
This appeared to be a allusion to the Turkish government, amid accounts Israeli officials had vetoed the nation's participation.
It remained unclear, however, how this contingent could be stationed without an agreement with Hamas.
Israel initiated a armed operation in the territory in following the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about 1,200 people and took 251 others as hostages.
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 area's health authorities under the group's control.
