After the military retrieved the remains of six captives from a Gaza tunnel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “settle the score” with Hamas.
“Those who kill hostages do not want an agreement” for a Gaza cease-fire, Netanyahu said in a statement, warning Hamas leaders that “we will hunt you down, catch you, and settle the score”.
Netanyahu stated that Israel is “fighting on all fronts against a cruel enemy who wants to murder us all,” referring to a gun incident near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank that killed three police officers earlier on Sunday.
Hamas has not claimed the attack but in a statement called it a “heroic operation by the resistance”.
Israel announced it has retrieved the remains of six hostages in Gaza, including a young Israeli-American man who became one of Hamas’ most well-known prisoners after his parents visited with international leaders and advocated for his release.
The military stated that all six were slain just before the arrival of Israeli soldiers. Their return triggered demands for major rallies against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom many Israelis blame for failing to bring them back alive in an agreement with Hamas to end the 10-month-old conflict. Negotiations for such a settlement have dragged on for months.
Netanyahu claimed Israel would hold Hamas accountable for killing the captives in “cold blood,” and blamed the Palestinian organisation for the halted talks, adding “Whoever murders hostages doesn’t want a deal.”
Impact Shorts
More ShortsMilitants kidnapped Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, and four other captives at a music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’ October 7 raid, which sparked the conflict.
The Berkeley, California native lost part of his left arm to a grenade during the attack. In April, a Hamas-issued video showed him alive but with his left hand removed, prompting new rallies in Israel calling on the government to do more to ensure the hostages’ release.
The army named the other slain captives as Ori Danino, 25; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Almog Sarusi, 27; and Alexander Lobanov, 33, who were also seized from the music event. The sixth, Carmel Gat, aged 40, was kidnapped from the adjacent rural town of Be’eri.
It claimed the remains were found in a tunnel in Rafah, southern Gaza, around a kilometre (half a mile) from where another prisoner, 52-year-old Qaid Farhan Alkadi, was liberated last week.
According to Netanyahu, “the fact that Hamas continues to commit atrocities such as those it committed on October 7 obliges us to do everything we can to ensure that it can no longer do so”, referring to the Palestinian group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
A senior Hamas official said that several of the six hostages found dead had been “approved” for release in the event of a truce deal, which has yet to be finalised despite months of mediation efforts.
“Some of the names of the captives announced as found by the (Israeli) occupier… were part of the list of hostages to be released that Hamas had approved” in a proposed exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly on the issue.
Israeli media reported that US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and two others whose bodies had been recovered from Gaza – Carmel Gat and Eden Yerushalmi – had been approved by Hamas to be released in the event of a truce deal.
The Hamas official said the six captives were “killed by the occupation’s fire and bombing”, an accusation denied by the Israeli military.
Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani in an online briefing with journalists that “according to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists”.
“We do know they were murdered by Hamas terrorists. We do know -– I can tell you -– there was no real-time fire engagement in the tunnel,” Shoshani said.
Claims by Hamas that the hostages were killed by Israeli forces were “psychological warfare”, he said.
The bodies were found in a tunnel in the southern city of Rafah, around one kilometre (0.6 miles) away from where troops had rescued alive another hostage, Kaid Farhan Alkadi, on Tuesday, according to Shoshani.
With inputs from agencies