Hamas insisted it was committed to returning all the hostage remains still unaccounted for under Gaza’s ruins, as a Turkish official said specialists dispatched to help find bodies were on Friday awaiting Israeli permission to enter.
Responding to a call from Hamas for help locating the bodies of the 19 hostages, buried under the rubble alongside an untold number of Palestinians, Ankara sent specialists to help in the search.
A Turkish official told AFP on Friday that dozens of disaster response specialists were at the Egyptian side of the border awaiting a green light from the Israeli government to enter the war-shattered Palestinian territory.
The 81-member team from Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) is equipped with specialised search-and-rescue tools, including life-detection devices and trained search dogs.
“It remains unclear when Israel will allow the Turkish team to enter Gaza,” the official said.
Under a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas spearheaded by US President Donald Trump, Hamas returned 20 surviving hostages and the remains of nine of 28 known deceased hostages — along with another body, which Israel has said was not that of a former hostage.
In exchange, Israel freed nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners from its jails and halted the military campaign it launched in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
A Hamas source told AFP the Turkish delegation is expected to enter Gaza by Sunday.
The Turkish official noted that the recovery team’s complicated mission included locating both Palestinian and hostage bodies.
– ‘May require some time’ –
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed on Thursday his determination to “secure the return of all hostages” after his defence minister warned that the military would restart the conflict if Hamas failed to do so.
Hamas later insisted on “its commitment to the agreement and its implementation, including its keenness to hand over all remaining corpses”.
But it said the process “may require some time, as some of these corpses were buried in tunnels destroyed by the occupation, while others remain under the rubble of buildings it bombed and demolished”.
Trump appeared on Wednesday to call for patience when it came to the bodies’ return, insisting Hamas was “actually digging” for hostages’ remains.
The ceasefire deal has so far seen the war grind to a halt after two years of agony for the hostages’ families, and constant bombardment and hunger for Gazans.
The UN’s World Food Programme said on Friday it had been able to move close to 3,000 tonnes of food supplies into Gaza since the ceasefire took hold.
But it cautioned it would take time to reverse the famine in the Gaza Strip, saying all crossings needed to be opened to “flood Gaza with food”.
Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza calls for renewed aid provision, with international organisations eagerly awaiting the reopening of southern Gaza’s strategic Rafah crossing.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher entered Gaza on Friday and watched a convoy of aid crossing to Rafah from Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing.
“We’ve begged for this access for months and finally we’re seeing goods moving at scale: food, medicine, tents, fuel, a lot of fuel got in today,” he said, in a video message posted to social media.
The next phases of the truce should also include the disarmament of Hamas, the offer of amnesty to Hamas leaders who decommission their weapons and establishing the governance of post-war Gaza.
– ‘Better than living on street’ –
The families of the surviving hostages have been able to rejoice in their return after two long years. Others have had to endure the agony of burying the returned remains of their loved ones.
“We’ve been waiting for this for so long, two years that we’ve been fighting for him every single day,” said 30-year-old Gal Gilboa Dalal, the older brother of Guy Gilboa Dalal, who was released after two years in Hamas captivity.
Gal told AFP that Hamas had intentionally starved his brother and another prisoner for three-and-a-half months to use him as a prop in a propaganda video about hunger.
“It’s hard for him to eat much, even though he wants to. He has severe stomach pain and digestive issues. Their skin is very pale and sensitive. Their bones hurt, their muscles hurt. Their recovery will be very long.”
Mourners clutching Israeli flags lined the streets in Rishon Lezion on Friday for the funeral convoy of Inbar Hayman, whose body was returned on Wednesday.
For Palestinians in Gaza, meanwhile, while there was relief that the bombing had stopped, the road to recovery felt impossible as people began clearing the rubble from their destroyed homes.
“I’m right under the threat of death. It could collapse at any moment,” said Ahmad Saleh Sbeih, a Gaza City resident. “But there is no choice. This is better than living on the street.”
The war has killed at least 67,967 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.
The data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but indicates that more than half of the dead are women and children.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
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