Relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the October 7 attack by Hamas militants hold placards and wave Israeli flags during a demonstration in Tel Aviv on April 6, 2024.
Jack Guess | AFP | Getty Images
Israel said on Saturday its special forces had recovered the body of a hostage killed while being held in Gaza, and Hamas, the Palestinian enclave’s dominant Islamist movement, said it would take part in a new round of military operations. ceasefire Talks held in Cairo.
Nearly six months after the war broke out, Israel faces protests inside the country demanding a deal to release a dwindling number of hostages from Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border violence. Meanwhile, Western countries have expressed outrage at the unacceptably high death toll among Palestinian civilians and the ensuing humanitarian crisis.
The military said commandos exhumed the body of 47-year-old Israeli farmer Elad Katzir overnight in southern Khan Younis. The statement cited intelligence information that he had been killed by kidnappers from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group and was buried here in mid-January, but declined to elaborate on the intelligence information.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas ally Islamic Jihad.
According to official statistics, Qazir was one of 253 people dragged into Gaza by Hamas-led gunmen. According to official statistics, the gunmen have killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel, and the offensive has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to medics in the enclave.
His father Avraham was killed in their kibbutz Nir Oz, and his mother Hanna was also held hostage but was released under a truce in November.
Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been working on another deal that could see some of the 129 remaining hostages repatriated during a long ceasefire in Gaza.
Gaza’s health ministry on Saturday reported one of the lowest daily death tolls in six months, saying 46 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli attacks in the past 24 hours.
The Gaza-based health ministry did not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in its report, but local health officials said most of the deaths were civilians. Israel says at least a third are fighters.
Hamas said on Saturday that its militants targeted three Israeli tanks in Khan Younis with missiles, causing casualties. The Israeli military had no immediate comment but said earlier that troops were engaging gunmen in the area.
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The World Health Organization said its team had successfully reached Shifa hospital in Gaza city, where a two-week raid by Israeli special forces on suspected militants left behind a wasteland of destroyed buildings.
The team saw at least five bodies in the complex, most of which were badly damaged. “A return to even minimal functionality in the short term seems implausible,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
Shifa Hospital was the largest hospital in Gaza before the war and one of the few partially functioning medical facilities in the northern part of the enclave before the raid.
U.S. President Joe Biden, angered by Israeli air strikes that killed aid workers in Gaza, urged Israel on Thursday to “immediately cease fire” and step up humanitarian relief measures.
Israel approved the reopening of the Erez crossing into northern Gaza and the temporary use of its Ashdod port after criticism from the United States, with United Nations aid coordinator Jamie McGoldrick welcoming the measures on Saturday.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid told N12’s Meet the Press program on Saturday that he will travel to Washington where he will meet with U.S. officials next week. The Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether senior officials would meet with Lapid.
Hamas said it would send a delegation to Cairo on Sunday for a new round of mediation talks. An Israeli official said Israel had not yet decided whether to participate, fearing the event would be “more political showmanship than real progress.”
Hamas wants any deal that ends the war and withdraws Israeli troops. Israel says it will oust Hamas, which it has vowed to destroy, after a ceasefire.
A rally in Jerusalem is scheduled for Sunday calling on leaders to secure the release of hostages, marking six months since the Oct. 7 attack, and anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday called for elections.
In a Jan. 8 video released online by Islamic Jihad, Qazir said: “I have been close to death more than once. It is a miracle that I am still alive… I want to tell my family that I love them very much and that I miss them very much. them.”
According to various sources, Israel announced the death of at least 35 hostages in Gaza. Palestinian factions said some people were killed in Israeli attacks. Israel confirmed this in several cases but said in other cases the bodies of hostages found showed signs of execution.
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