Israel yesterday announced that its troops had found six dead hostages in a Gaza tunnel, while Israeli police said a “shooting attack” in the occupied West Bank killed three officers.
The deadly shooting near the city of Hebron added to surging violence in the West Bank, which is separated from Gaza by Israeli territory and where Israel has pressed on since Wednesday last week with a large-scale military operation that has sparked international concern.
In the besieged Gaza Strip, “humanitarian pauses” in the nearly 11-month war between Israel and Hamas were set to take hold yesterday to facilitate a massive polio vaccination drive which a health official said had begun.
Photo: AFP
An Israeli military statement said the remains of six hostages were recovered on Saturday “from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area” in southern Gaza and formally identified in Israel.
They were identified as Carmel Gat, who was taken from a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, and Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino, US-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Russian-Israeli Alexander Lobanov, who were seized by Palestinian militants from the site of a music festival.
Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said all six “were abducted alive on the morning of Oct. 7” and “brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them.”
US President Joe Biden said he was “devastated and outraged” by the deaths of the six hostages, including Goldberg-Polin.
He also told reporters he was “still optimistic” that a Gaza truce and hostage release deal could be reached.
“It’s time this war ended,” said Biden, whose administration has been involved in mediation efforts for a ceasefire along with Qatar and Egypt.
The six were among 251 hostages seized during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack last year that triggered the ongoing war, 97 of whom remain captive in Gaza including 33 the Israeli army says are dead.
Scores were released during a negotiated one-week truce in November last year.
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said a negotiated “deal for the return of the hostages” was urgently needed.
“Were it not for the delays, sabotage and excuses” in months of mediation efforts, the six hostages “would likely still be alive,” it said.
A senior Hamas official on condition of anonymity said that “some” of them had been “approved” for release in a potential hostage-prisoner swap as part of a truce deal — which has yet to be agreed.
Critics in Israel have accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war for political gain.
The Hamas official said the six captives were “killed by the [Israeli] occupation’s fire and bombing,” an accusation denied by the Israeli military.
Netanyahu said Hamas leaders were the ones “who kill hostages and do not want an agreement,” vowing to “settle the score” with them.
Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on Israeli official figures.
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