The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated that its representatives joined Hamas officials into areas of Gaza still under IDF authority to support the search for the remains of Israeli hostages.
Under the truce negotiated by the United States, which began on October 10, Hamas is required to return the bodies of all captives promptly. In exchange, the Israeli government has agreed to hand over the remains of 15 Palestinians for each Israeli.
The organization has so far returned the remains of 15 of those taken hostage but none in the past five days, as some of those remains are believed to be in areas past the ceasefire boundary designating the temporary truce line.
“Upon the appeal of the parties, the Red Cross joined a participant in the hostilities as the group searched for the bodies of the deceased past the military-established ‘yellow line’,” said a representative for the organization.
She continued: “The parties to the conflict determined the modalities of the mission and delegated the Red Cross to serve as a impartial mediator. We was had no part in the discussions.”
She additionally clarified: “Our team was not involved in the search for the deceased nor does it engage in the physical recovery of human remains.”
Under global legal norms, it is the duty of the sides engaged in a conflict to locate, gather, and recover human remains.
On Saturday, the American leader issued a two-day demand to the organization. “Hamas is going to have to start returning the remains of the hostages who died, which include two Americans, quickly, or the additional nations participating in this great peace will intervene,” he posted on his online channel.
When the two-day window neared, the group, joined by the ICRC, teamed up with teams from Egypt, who were authorised by Israeli authorities to search for bodies past the boundary indicating the Israeli military’s pullback inside Gaza. An official representative said the Egyptian team would use excavator machines and trucks in the search.
This development was corroborated by an unnamed Israeli official, who told local press that members of the group had been permitted to enter sections of the region under military authority to search for the bodies of hostages, together with Egypt’s and Red Cross teams.
“To achieve this goal, representatives were allowed to pass the designated boundary,” the source was cited as stating.
Footage published by a regional network appeared to show members of a specialized group – belonging to the organization’s armed faction responsible for holding hostages – escorting a Red Cross vehicle in a coastal area close to Rafah, which lies outside IDF jurisdiction.
Efforts to locate for the remains of individuals taken captive has become one of the most sensitive matters in the ceasefire reached between the parties. Yet, the attempt to find the remains has proved challenging from the beginning, given the existence of an approximate enormous amount of debris across the territory, where, as per local health authorities, at least ten thousand residents are listed as unaccounted for, trapped under the debris.
Hamas has claimed it does not know the precise whereabouts of all the remains, saying it has been unable to communicate with a number of its teams that had been detaining the hostages and were allegedly eliminated during military strikes.
In contrast, an Israeli government spokesperson asserted that the organization knew the whereabouts of the bodies. “If Hamas exerted greater effort, they would be able to retrieve the bodies of our hostages,” the spokesperson said.
Although the American leader has conceded that a portion of the bodies are hard to access, he said that “the rest they can return now and, for some reason, they are failing to do so.”
“It may have to do with the disarming of Hamas,” he noted.
The US administration has said it has obtained assurances from Hamas that the group will disarm, though no specific schedule has been established. The militant organisation remains hesitant to give up its weapons without firm guarantees about the future of its fighters.
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