DM Monitoring
JERUSALEM: Israel said it recovered the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in Gaza where they were apparently killed shortly before its troops reached them, triggering Israeli protests on Sunday and planned strikes over the failure to save them.
The Israeli military announced the recovery of the bodies from underground in the southern city of Rafah, as a polio vaccination campaign began in the war-shattered territory and violence flared in the occupied West Bank. The bodies of Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino have been returned to Israel, military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters in a briefing.
“According to our initial estimation, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces growing calls to end nearly 11 months of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza with a deal that includes a ceasefire and the release of remaining hostages, said Israel would not rest until it caught those responsible.
“Whoever murders hostages – does not want a deal,” he said.
Senior Hamas officials said that Israel, in its refusal to sign a ceasefire agreement, was to blame for the deaths.
“Netanyahu is responsible for the killing of Israeli prisoners,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told media. “The Israelis should choose between Netanyahu and the deal.”
The recovered bodies were from about 250 hostages captured during the Hamas-led shock incursion into southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza on Oct. 7 last year.
Their deaths leave 101 Israeli and foreign captives still in Gaza, but around a third of these are known to have died, with the fate of others unknown.
Thousands of Israelis joined protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as pressure mounted on Netanyahu to do more to bring the remaining hostages home.
