Egypt along with Red Cross Join Search for Hostage Remains in Gaza Strip
Teams from Egyptian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been authorized to locate the remains of deceased hostages taken during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have confirmed.
The authorities in Israel announced that the teams have been allowed to search beyond the referred to as "demarcation line" in the region controlled by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Hamas has transferred fifteen out of 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered truce agreement, which requires it to transfer all hostage bodies. The organization said it is now working together with Egyptian authorities.
Donald Trump has cautions the organization to begin returning the bodies "promptly, or the other countries involved in this significant peace will take action".
An official representative said the crew from Egypt has been authorized to collaborate with the ICRC to find the bodies, and would use excavator machines and vehicles for the search past the "demarcation line".
The "demarcation line" marks the border running along the north, south and eastern of the Gaza territory that Israel pulled back to, as part of the first stage of the truce agreement.
Until now, Israel has not authorized the entry of these crews.
Egypt, along with Qatari officials and Turkish authorities, is a key signatory 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 greeted positively by relatives, desperate to give them a proper burial.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been deeply engaged in the repatriation of captives.
The organization does not transfer its detainees - alive or deceased - straight to the IDF, but rather to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through Gaza and hands them on to the IDF.
But the entry of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza Strip is new.
After more than 24 months of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the United Nations calculates that as much as eighty-four percent of the territory has been reduced to rubble.
The group says it is doing its best to retrieve hostage bodies, but it faces difficulty locating them under debris of structures bombed out by the IDF in Gaza.
It is now working in coordination with the officials in Egypt.
On Sunday, an official representative 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.
The former president posted on his social media account on the weekend that action would be taken if the bodies of the hostages who died were not handed back promptly.
"Some of the remains are hard to reach, but the rest they can hand over now and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their demilitarization," he said.
He continued: "We will observe what they do over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely."
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On Sunday, the Israeli leader announced the country would determine which international troops it would allow as part of a proposed multinational contingent 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 Israel will decide which forces are not acceptable to us, and this is how we function and will proceed," he said talking 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 added Israeli authorities would have to be satisfied with those taking part.
This appeared to be a reference to the Turkish government, amid accounts Israel had vetoed the nation's involvement.
It was still uncertain, however, how this contingent could be deployed without an understanding with Hamas.
Israel initiated a armed operation in Gaza in following the incidents of October 7th, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed 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 since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
