Egypt along with International Committee of the Red Cross Join Search for Captive Bodies in Gaza Strip
Teams from Egyptian authorities and the ICRC have been granted permission to locate the bodies of hostages who perished captured during the October 7th incidents, officials in Israel have verified.
The Israeli government announced that the crews have been allowed to search past the so-called "demarcation line" in the region controlled by military personnel in the Gaza territory.
The group has transferred fifteen out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal, which mandates it to hand over all hostage bodies. The organization said it is now working together with Egyptian authorities.
Donald Trump has cautions the organization to begin returning the remains "quickly, or the additional nations 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 find the bodies, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the search beyond the "demarcation line".
The "demarcation line" indicates the boundary running along the northern, southern and east of the Gaza territory that Israel withdrew to, as part of the first stage of the truce agreement.
Until now, Israeli authorities has not authorized the entry of these crews.
Egypt, along with Qatari officials and Turkey, is a key signatory of the mediated by Trump peace initiative for Gaza, which was ratified in the Egyptian resort of the resort town in recent weeks.
The news will be greeted positively by relatives, desperate to provide a dignified funeral.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the repatriation of captives.
The organization does not transfer its captives - living or deceased - directly to the Israel Defense Forces, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn accompanies them through the territory and transfers them to the Israeli military.
But the entry of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza territory is new.
After more than 24 months of heavy shelling by Israeli forces, the UN calculates that as much as 84% of the area has been reduced to rubble.
The group claims it is making every effort to retrieve remains of captives, but it faces difficulty locating them under rubble 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 said that the organization knew where the bodies were.
"If the group made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our captives," the spokesperson said.
The former president posted on his social media account on Saturday that action would be implemented if the bodies of the hostages who died were not returned promptly.
"Some of the remains are hard to reach, but the rest they can hand over at present and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their disarming," he said.
He added: "We will observe what they accomplish over the coming two days. I am watching this very closely."
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On the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would determine which international troops it would permit as part of a proposed multinational contingent in the region to help secure the truce under the former president's initiative.
"We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding foreign troops that Israel will decide which units are not acceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate," he declared talking at the beginning of a government session.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated "a lot of countries" had volunteered to be part of the contingent - but added Israel would have to be satisfied with participants.
This appeared to be a allusion to the Turkish government, amid reports Israel had rejected the nation's involvement.
It was still uncertain, however, how such a force could be deployed without an agreement with the organization.
Israel initiated a armed operation in Gaza in following the 7 October 2023 attack, in which militants associated with the group took the lives of about twelve hundred individuals and captured two hundred fifty-one additional persons as captives.
At least 68,519 have been killed in military actions in the region from that time, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.