Israel announced Sunday 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 Israeli has pressed on since Wednesday 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 on Sunday to facilitate a massive polio vaccination drive which a health official told AFP had begun.
A military statement said the remains of six hostages were recovered Saturday “from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area” in southern Gaza and formally identified in Israel.
The were named as Carmel Gat, who was taken from a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, as well as 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.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said all six “were abducted alive on the morning of October 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 can 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’s October 7 attack 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.
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”.
A senior Hamas official told AFP on condition of anonymity 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.
Credit: AFP
