Jerusalem.- Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages in southern Gaza in a nighttime raid, the Israeli army announced Tuesday, stressing its commitment to the captives who remain in the Palestinian enclave.
Five of the six were known to have lost their lives.
Of the 250 people Israeli authorities say were taken hostage during the Hamas attack on October 7, Israeli forces have rescued only seven people alive.
Many of the rest, mostly women and children, were returned to Israel during a week-long ceasefire last November.
More than 100 captives remain in Gaza, at least 30 of them believed to be dead.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the six bodies were removed from Hamas tunnels beneath the city of Khan Younis in a “complex operation,” and the military released their names.
Avraham Munder, 79, was the only hostage of the six whose death had not been determined.
He was abducted from Nir Oz, a communal town near the Gaza border, along with three others: Haim Peri, 80, Yoram Metzger, 80, and Alexander Dancyg, 75.
The remaining two, Nadav Popplewell, 51, and Yagev Buchstab, 35, were taken from another border community, Nirim.
The exact circumstances of his death were not clarified.
Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military division, said in March that Metzger and Peri were seven hostages killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
Hamas later revealed in May that Popplewell died from injuries resulting from an Israeli airstrike about a month earlier.
Weeks later, the Israeli military said it was examining the possibility that the three hostages had been killed while Israeli forces were operating in the Khan Younis area.
On Tuesday, the army said the operation to extract the six bodies occurred after a prolonged battle in a construction area.
The army added that Israeli forces found a 10-meter-deep tunnel leading to an underground route, where they neutralized obstructions, broke down doors, found weapons, explosives and militant hideouts, a statement said.
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