Teams from Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to locate the remains of hostages who perished taken during the October 7th incidents, officials in Israel have verified.
The Israeli government announced that the teams have been permitted to search past the referred to as "demarcation line" in the area controlled by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Hamas has handed over 15 out of twenty-eight hostages who lost their lives under the initial stage of a American-mediated truce agreement, which mandates it to transfer all remains of captives. The organization said it is now coordinating with Egyptian authorities.
Donald Trump has warned Hamas to begin returning the bodies "quickly, or the other countries participating in this significant peace will intervene".
An official representative said the Egyptian team has been authorized to work with the Red Cross to locate the remains, and would use excavator machines and vehicles for the operation past the "yellow line".
The "yellow line" indicates the border running along the north, southern and eastern of the Gaza territory that Israel pulled back to, as part of the initial phase of the truce agreement.
Previously, Israeli authorities has not approved the entry of these crews.
Egypt, along with Qatari officials and Turkish authorities, is a principal participant of the mediated by Trump Gaza peace plan, which was signed in the coastal city of the resort town in recent weeks.
The development will be welcomed by family members, desperate to provide a dignified funeral.
The ICRC has already been heavily involved in the repatriation of hostages.
The organization does not transfer its detainees - living or deceased - directly to the IDF, but instead to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through Gaza and hands them on to the IDF.
But the arrival of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza territory is new.
After more than two years of heavy shelling by Israeli forces, the United Nations calculates that as much as 84% of the territory has been reduced to rubble.
The group claims it is making every effort to retrieve hostage bodies, but it faces difficulty locating them under debris of structures destroyed by the Israeli military in the region.
It is now coordinating with the Egyptian authorities.
On Sunday, an Israeli government spokesperson said that Hamas was aware of where the remains were.
"If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our hostages," the spokesperson commented.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on the weekend that action would be implemented if the remains of the deceased hostages were not handed back promptly.
"Some of the remains are difficult to access, but the rest they can return at present and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their disarming," he said.
Trump added: "We will observe what they do over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely."
On the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country would determine which international troops it would allow as part of a proposed international force in Gaza to help maintain the ceasefire under Trump's plan.
"We are in command of our security, and we have also stated explicitly regarding international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we function and will continue to operate," he declared speaking at the beginning of a government session.
On the end of the week, the American diplomat indicated "a lot of nations" had offered to be involved in the force - but added Israeli authorities would have to be comfortable with participants.
This seemed like a reference to Turkey, amid accounts Israeli officials had rejected the nation's participation.
It remained unclear, however, how this contingent could be stationed without an agreement with Hamas.
The Israeli military launched a armed operation in Gaza in response to the incidents of October 7th, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about 1,200 individuals and took 251 additional persons as hostages.
At least sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in Israeli attacks in the region since then, according to the area's Hamas-run health ministry.
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