Red Cross Cooperates with Hamas to Search for Hostage Bodies

TEHRAN (Defapress) - The International Committee of the Red Cross, together with Hamas members, is searching for the bodies of Israeli hostages in areas under Israeli army control in the Gaza Strip.

According to the US-led ceasefire that took effect on October 10, Hamas is obliged to return the bodies of all Israeli hostages as soon as possible. In return, Israel has agreed to hand over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every Israeli hostage.

So far, Hamas has returned the bodies of 15 hostages, but has not handed over any bodies in the past five days, because the remaining bodies are on the other side of the “Yellow Line” of the ceasefire.

“At the request of the parties to the conflict, the International Committee of the Red Cross yesterday accompanied a team of Hamas members to search for bodies on the other side of the yellow line drawn by the Israeli army,” said Sarah Davies, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross. “The parties to the conflict have determined the details of the operation and have chosen the Red Cross as an impartial mediator.”

Under international law, the responsibility for searching, collecting, and recovering bodies after a conflict lies with the parties to the conflict.

On Saturday, the US president set a 48-hour deadline for Hamas, saying: “Hamas must immediately return the bodies of the slain hostages, including those of the two Americans, or the other countries present in this great peace will take action.”

As the deadline approached, Hamas, accompanied by the Red Cross, joined Egyptian teams that had received permission from Israel to enter areas under Israeli army control in Gaza on Sunday. The Egyptian team is to use excavators and trucks to search, an Israeli spokesman said.

An Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Hebrew-language media that Hamas representatives had been allowed to enter areas under Israeli military control to search for the bodies of the hostages, along with Egyptian and Red Cross teams. “For this purpose, Hamas members were allowed to cross the yellow line,” he said.

Footage released by Qatar’s Al-Arabi TV network showed members of Hamas’s “shadow unit” (a military unit responsible for holding hostages) seen in the Al-Mawasi area with a Red Cross vehicle, an area outside Israeli military control.

The search for the bodies of the Israeli hostages has become one of the most sensitive issues in the ceasefire agreement between the two sides. The process was fraught with difficulties from the start, as according to the Gaza Health Ministry, there are about 60 million tons of rubble across the Gaza Strip, and at least 10,000 Palestinians are missing under the rubble.

Hamas has said it does not know the exact location of some of the bodies and has lost contact with some of the shadowy units.

However, a spokesman for the occupying army claimed that Hamas knew where the bodies were, saying: “If Hamas tries harder, they can recover the bodies of our hostages.”

Trump, while acknowledging the difficulty of accessing some of the bodies, said: “They could return some of the bodies right now, but for some reason they are not doing so. Perhaps it has to do with Hamas’s disarmament.”

Washington claims to have received assurances from Hamas about disarmament, but no specific timetable has been set for this yet.