The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a statement today (September 1) saying that it had repatriated the bodies of Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino, six people who had been held hostage by Hamas militants since the group’s raid on Israeli territory on October 7, 2023.
“Our initial guess is that they were brutally murdered by Hamas before we reached them, maybe a day or two before. Their bodies were found during fighting in Rafah, in a tunnel about a kilometer from the tunnel where we rescued hostage Farhan al-Qadi a few days ago,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, told a news conference, according to the Times of Israel.
Hagari said the IDF did not know the exact location of the hostages but had detected signs of a possible site and had been operating carefully in the area. Israeli soldiers began searching a tunnel complex, some 20 meters underground, on August 31 and found the dead hostages in the afternoon. Their bodies were taken out of Gaza at night and brought to Israel for identification.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed his grief, sending condolences to the families of the victims and apologizing for not being able to bring them home safely. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure at home and abroad to reach a ceasefire and release the remaining hostages in Gaza, has yet to comment on the developments.
The Forum for Families of Hostage and Missing Persons, a group representing relatives of those kidnapped in Gaza, criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu and announced major protests on September 1, including an event in Jerusalem at 4 p.m. and a protest outside the Israeli Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv at 7 p.m.
On the same day, US President Joe Biden issued a statement confirming that he had been informed of the deaths of six hostages in Gaza. “I am deeply saddened and outraged. Hamas leaders will pay a price for these crimes. We will continue to work around the clock to reach an agreement to secure the freedom of the remaining hostages,” Biden said.
Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper quoted Izzat El-Reshiq, a senior Hamas official, as saying that Israel, by refusing to sign the ceasefire agreement, was responsible for the deaths of hostages in Gaza. Sources familiar with the talks said that the main sticking points in the negotiations between the two sides were Israel’s presence in the “Philadelphi corridor”, a narrow 14.5km strip of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, as well as Tel Aviv’s concerns about a number of Palestinian prisoners that Hamas had demanded be released.
