Israeli forces retrieved the remains of five Israelis, killed during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, whose bodies had been taken to the Gaza Strip, the military said Thursday.
It said the bodies of Maya Goren as well as soldiers Tomer Ahimas and Kiril Brodski, along with Ravid Aryeh Katz and Oren Goldin — military reservists — had been returned to Israel following a rescue operation.
The five had previously been announced dead, and the military and an Israeli campaign group, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, said that they all had been killed by Palestinian militants on the day of the attack.
The military said the soldiers were killed in combat while fighting the militants on October 7.
The attack by Hamas militants on that day resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom remain in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
The bodies were recovered on Wednesday during an operation in Khan Yunis, the main city in the south of the Gaza Strip, the military said, more than nine months into the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas.
The military did not provide details but said the intelligence gathered prior to the rescue mission included information provided by arrested militants.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, in a statement praising the mission, said the military “will continue fighting Hamas until its defeat”.
“We are committed to returning the hostages home.”
The recovery of the bodies came days after the military launched a new assault on Khan Yunis. Israel said it was pulling troops from the city in April, after months of fierce fighting in the area.
Call for ceasefire deal
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum insisted that the Israeli government agree to a ceasefire deal that could help return the remaining captives.
It said the recovery of the five bodies “is a crucial and decisive military action that provides their families with important closure and eternal rest for the murdered”.
In a statement on Thursday, the group added, “It is Israel’s duty to return all the murdered for honourable burial and all living hostages for rehabilitation.”
The group separately demanded an urgent meeting with Israel’s team for negotiating a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, saying a “crisis of trust” had emerged.
“It has now become apparent that the information provided to the hostages’ families did not accurately reflect the situation’s reality,” the forum said in the latest statement.
“This foot-dragging is a deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back. It effectively undermines the negotiations and indicates a serious moral failure.”
Their accusation came while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whose critics have accused him of prolonging the war — is in Washington for talks Thursday with US President Joe Biden.
A senior US administration official said on Wednesday that negotiations on a Gaza deal were in the last stretch and that Biden would try to close some “final gaps” with Netanyahu.
Thursday’s military announcement came after two Israeli communities, Nir Oz and Nir Yitzhak, said in separate statements late on Wednesday that the army had recovered the bodies of Goren and Goldin.
“Last night, we were informed that in a military rescue operation, the body of the late Maya Goren was recovered,” the Nir Oz kibbutz community said, adding that her family had been informed.
Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak said the army had returned Goldin’s body.
“This evening, we were informed about the rescue operation for the late Oren Goldin, a member of the kibbutz emergency team, who fell on October 7” during the attack by Hamas militants, Nir Yitzhak said.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.