A Red Cross official stated that its representatives accompanied Hamas officials into areas of Gaza currently controlled by Israeli military authority to support the hunt for the remains of Israeli hostages.
As part of the US-brokered ceasefire, which took effect on October 10, the group is required to return the bodies of all captives promptly. As a reciprocal measure, the Israeli government has consented to transfer 15 Palestinian bodies for each Israeli.
Hamas has to date returned the bodies of 15 of those taken hostage but none in the past five days, as some of those bodies are believed to be in locations past the yellow line designating the temporary truce line.
“Upon the appeal of the parties, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) accompanied a participant in the hostilities as the party looked for the bodies of the deceased individuals beyond the military-established ‘yellow line’,” stated a spokesperson for the organization.
She continued: “The parties to the conflict established the modalities of the operation and entrusted the Red Cross to serve as a neutral intermediary. The ICRC was had no part in those negotiations.”
She additionally clarified: “Our team was did not participate in the search for the bodies nor does it take part in the retrieval of human remains.”
Under international humanitarian law, it is the duty of the parties engaged in a hostilities to locate, gather, and retrieve human remains.
On Saturday, the US president delivered a two-day ultimatum to the militant group. “They is going to have to begin returning the remains of the deceased hostages, including two Americans, promptly, or the other countries involved in this significant truce will take action,” he wrote on his social‑media platform.
When the 48-hour deadline neared, the group, accompanied by the ICRC, teamed up with Egyptian teams, who were authorised by Israel to look for remains past the boundary marking the withdrawal of troops inside Gaza. An official representative said the Egyptian team would use heavy machinery and trucks in the search.
This development was corroborated by an source within Israel, who told local press that members of the group had been permitted to enter sections of the region under Israel Defense Forces (IDF) control to look for the bodies of captives, alongside Egyptian and ICRC personnel.
“For this purpose, representatives were permitted to cross the designated boundary,” the official was cited as stating.
Footage released by a media outlet seemed to show members of a specialized group – part of the group’s armed faction tasked with guarding hostages – accompanying a Red Cross vehicle in a coastal area close to a southern city, which lies outside Israeli military control.
The search for the remains of individuals taken captive has turned into one of the most sensitive issues in the ceasefire agreed between the two sides. However, the attempt to find the remains has been challenging from the beginning, given the existence of an approximate 60m tonnes of debris across the strip, where, as per local health authorities, at least ten thousand residents are listed as missing, buried under the rubble.
The group has claimed it does not know the exact locations of all the bodies, saying it has lost contact with a number of its teams that had been holding the captives and were reportedly eliminated during Israeli bombardments.
However, an official representative asserted that the organization was aware of the whereabouts of the bodies. “Should the group exerted greater effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our captives,” the official said.
Although the US president has conceded that a portion of the remains are difficult to reach, he said that “others they can return immediately and, for unknown reasons, they are failing to do so.”
“This could be related to the disarming of Hamas,” he added.
The US administration has said it has obtained guarantees from Hamas that the faction will surrender its arms, though no specific schedule has been established. They remains reluctant to surrender its weapons without solid guarantees about the future of its fighters.
A seasoned casino analyst with over a decade of experience in online gambling, specializing in slot machine reviews and player strategy.
News