Illustrative image (The Israeli Defense Forces)
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced on September 1 that it recovered the bodies of six hostages, who were captured alive by the Hamas Movement on October 7, from a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah a few days ago, shortly after they were murdered by their captors.
The hostages were identified by the IDF as Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lubnov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27.
Goldberg-Polin, Yerushalmi, Lubnov, Sarusi and Danino, an off-duty noncommissioned officer, were captured by Hamas fighters from the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, while Gat was taken from the settlement of Be’eri.
IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the six were “brutally murdered” by Hamas fighters shortly before troops arrived, possibly only a day or two before they were found.
“According to an initial assessment… they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short while before we reached them. They were abducted alive on the morning of October 7 by the Hamas terror group,” Hagari said in a press conference.
“Their bodies were found during the fighting in Rafah, in a tunnel, about a kilometer away from the tunnel from which we rescued Farhan al-Qadi a few days ago,” he added.
The IDF did not have the exact location of the hostages but had indications of a general area where the six could be held, and was therefore operating carefully in the area, according to the spokesman.
“Since Farhan was found, troops were given an emphasis on operating carefully even more than usual, because of the understanding that additional hostages may be in the area. We did not have information on the exact location of the hostages,” Hagari said.
Israeli troops began to search a tunnel complex, some 20 meters underground, on August 31 and found the hostages, dead, in the afternoon. Their bodies were extracted from Gaza overnight and brought to Israel for identification.
Following the IDF announcement, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called on Israel’s security cabinet to convene and walk back on a decision to maintain military presence along the Philadelphi Corridor, the Gaza-Egypt border, as part of any potential ceasefire and hostage release deal.
The said Israeli decision is reportedly the main obstacle preventing a deal on Gaza, with both Hamas and Egypt rejecting it.
“The security cabinet must convene immediately and reverse the decision made on Thursday [August 29],” Gallant said on X.
“It is too late for the hostages who were murdered in cold blood. The hostages who remain in Hamas captivity must be returned home,” he added.
The IDF believes that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 33 confirmed dead. A temporary ceasefire in late November saw 105 civilian hostages released from Hamas captivity and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued by the IDF alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015. In addition, the bodies of two Israeli soldiers who were killed in 2014 remain in the hands of the group.
Meanwhile, the Israeli war on Gaza has so far claimed the lives of more than 40,700 Palestinains, mostly women and children.
The death of the six hostages could finally force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adopt a more realistic approach and accept a deal that would end the war on the Strip.
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idf has been executing russian citizens in gaza with impunity. where is the outrage from the russian fm?
russia rounded up the central asian youngsters and conscripted them to ukraine in retaliation to central asian terrorist attacks. the russian mind eludes simpletons like you.
i watch a lot of streams and clips concerning the war in ukraine can you please share evidence of your claims so i can use them in my anti-russian propaganda? i have a hard time confirming the things you said from what we’ve seen so far on the ground. can you help? please we need to show the world russia is bad and it’s very hard because they seem to do the right thing.
they were killed by the israelis
yep more than likely!
it might take god’s chosen chimpanzees a while to understand but israel is its own worse enemy
while it remains to be seen who or what killed these idf prisoners, it is quite the audacity for any israeli to talk of murdering in cold blood. they can kill, torture, rape and perform all manner of criminal acts in completely ‘cold blood’, but they call it self defense. murder of unarmed women and children by the 10’s of 1,000s is ok. what sort of deviant mind thinks this way? israelis. they are a plague on the world and needs to be eradicated.
zionist israelis’ psychopath alexithymia (flat affect) arrogant behavior >>> pathological liars / consummate liars / master of deception / absolute artist of fabrication / notorious liars / propagandist / arrogant rampant teller of untruths / incorrigible liars / “fraud deluge” / psychosis behavior / violent episodes / schizophrenia delusional hallucination syndrome / peadophile disorder / serial rapists / …
should hamas wait idf with open arms after those zio pigs mothafacka killers come assassinating innocent civilians????……
imo, bibi wants all of the hostages dead so that he doesn’t have to deal with the families and the public regarding this issue. it’s seen as a small sacrifice to pay for the greater good. and that greater good involves stealing the off shore oil and building beachfront property over dead palestinians.
israelis lie and lie and lie and lie and lie. israelis killed their own people on october 7 and lied about it. they killed hostages in “rescue” operations that killed more than they “rescued” while also murdering dozens of palestinian women and children. israel shot dead three hostages who escaped and tried to approach idf soldiers, speaking in hebrew and holding white flags. the one with red hair survived the first shooting, tried again with the white flag, and was shot dead.
the incident really should have been an enormous wake-up call to any israelis with a shred of decency.
for israel, hostages are a liability. that’s why they have the “hannibal directive” — to kill any potential hostages before they can be taken captive. netanyahu’s son even complained, in a statement online, that they didn’t kill enough israelis on october 7th. that the hannibal directive was incompletely followed.
the timing of this “discovery” of “freshly killed” bodies stinks of israeli desperation. netanyahu needed this, for reasons all his own.
the self anointed perennial victims are in reality the biggest mass murderering psychopaths in history. the world is waking up to the fact that the ziomafia hate not only the palestinian people whose land they’ve stolen but they hate everyone who doesn’t belong to their tribe of baby murderers.
given that the jews in their genocidal frenzy have killed more than 40000 palestinians, mostly women and children and otherwise infirm elders, hamas has shown great restraint in not killing each and every one of the hostages, which, under the circumstance, had been reasonable!
any one would do the same to a ruthless enemy group brainwashed by fascist animals that ravaged peaceful hippy communities. americans and europeans are just as brainwashed by repeating the iranian revolution islamist takeover. censored.
as a certified amerikan nazi i like hamas terrorist
sarcasm is rarely appreciated
they’re always supposedly brutally murdered, but we never any pictures to prove it. releasing photos would assure israel support from many countries, but they always claim protecting the families. palestinians don’t seem to have that “problem”, plenty of horror pictures around. could it be israel is lying? 🤡
you knowwhat is said: when you see the mouth of a jew moving you know he is lying!
stupid move to shoot hostage..!
we are coming for you who support hamas. we will find all of you, it doesn’t matter what country you live in.
being anti-israeli doesn’t make you pro-hamas. but that doesn’t matter with you. just like you murder children deliberately and routinely make things up. you won’t because you trash are toast. i was born the list of you filth and good luck, because i am only alive because of god. even your kosher nostra are abandoning you in your god-cursed endeavors.
just when the protests against the demon started in the zionazis teritory, this bodies showed, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.