Red Cross and Egyptian teams were permitted by Israel to search for the bodies of deceased hostages beyond the “Yellow Line” demarcating the military’s pullback in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli government spokesperson said on Sunday.
A Prime Minister’s Office official told The Times of Israel on Monday that a Hamas representative had also been permitted to enter Israel Defense Forces-controlled areas in Gaza to search for the bodies, alongside the Egyptian and Red Cross teams.
“He’s coming there, he’s saying dig here,” said the official. “It’s only for the location, it’s not for anything else.”
Hamas claims it has not yet been able to locate the bodies of some of the remaining 13 hostages, and has not returned any bodies since Tuesday. However, Israel is reportedly “certain” the terror group can hand over more bodies but is refusing to do so, and is also holding back information about their location, in a direct breach of the October 9 hostage-ceasefire agreement.
The government spokesperson said the Egyptian technical team and the Red Cross would use excavators and trucks for the search for the bodies in territory under Israeli military control. She did not mention the reports claiming that Hamas members were also permitted to enter the IDF-held areas of Gaza.
“Hamas members were allowed, for this purpose, to cross the Yellow Line,” an Israeli official was cited as saying by Army Radio. Channel 12 news cited an official as saying that “Israel authorized a representative of Hamas to enter the Yellow Line together with the Red Cross to help locate fallen hostages.”
The Qatari Al-Araby published footage of Hamas members — reportedly from the “Shadow Unit” of the group’s military wing, which is responsible for guarding hostages — together with a Red Cross vehicle in the al-Mawasi area near Rafah, an area that is not under IDF control.
Responding to the reports, the International Committee of the Red Cross said: “The International Committee of the Red Cross is currently operating in Gaza as a neutral intermediary, at the request of the parties, to facilitate the return of the remains of hostages who are no longer alive, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement. To ensure the safety of those involved, we will not comment further on the different reports at this stage.”
Israel is also reportedly searching for hostages’ bodies within the half of Gaza it controls. According to Kan, a security official told the families of deceased captives that a search is underway based on an intelligence assessment.
A day earlier, an Israeli defense official said that an Egyptian team entered the Strip with several engineering vehicles to assist with locating the hostages’ remains.
The move was personally approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his office told The Times of Israel.
“It is a technical team,” the PMO said. “They are going in only to locate the slain hostages.”
Until Saturday, Israel had not approved the entry of such teams, claiming that Hamas was capable of finding and returning the bodies itself.
Photographs published by AFP Sunday showed dozens of additional Egyptian heavy engineering vehicles lining up to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing.
Channel 12 cited Israeli sources as saying they expect Hamas to return two more bodies on Sunday amid increasing pressure from mediators, who told the terror group that US President Donald Trump is close to declaring it responsible for the collapse of the ceasefire agreement.
The outlet also reported that after several days of Hamas failing to hand over hostages’ bodies, Israel over the weekend considered halting aid deliveries in order to pressure the group into fulfilling its end of the deal, but the Trump administration blocked the move, fearing it would lead to the collapse of the truce.
“As far as he’s concerned, harming humanitarian aid is a red line,” the report quoted American officials as saying of the US president.
Trump on Saturday warned he was watching “very closely” and expected Hamas to release hostages’ bodies in the next 48 hours in line with the terms of the deal.
The Israeli government spokesperson said that Hamas knows where some hostages are being held. “Israel is aware that Hamas knows where our deceased hostages are, in fact, located. If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our hostages,” she said.
On Sunday evening, the Kan public broadcaster reported that Israel does not know the location of just four of the remaining 13 bodies of hostages.
According to the report, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir tried to explain to visiting US Vice President JD Vance last week that Israel has spent years trying to locate the remains of Hadar Goldin, a soldier killed in 2014 whose body is one of the 13 that Israel is still waiting to recover.
Before the ceasefire, Hamas was holding the bodies of 28 dead hostages. It has since returned 15 of them, along with releasing all 20 surviving hostages, of the 251 total who were abducted during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel that precipitated the war in Gaza.
