Israeli army recovers bodies of five victims of October 7

Photo: Leo Correa Associated Press In Tel Aviv, Israelis continue to demonstrate to demand the release of hostages still in the hands of Hamas, as was the case on Tuesday.

Agence France-Presse in the Gaza Strip

Published at 10:15 a.m. Updated at 4:09 p.m.

• Middle East

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Deadly artillery fire and airstrikes targeted the Gaza Strip on Thursday, where the Israeli army recovered the bodies of five Israelis killed during the Hamas attack on October 7 and taken to the Palestinian territory.

After being received in Congress, where he defended the war in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with US President Joe Biden in Washington on Thursday, before a scheduled meeting with his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

Joe Biden was expected to reiterate to his interlocutor that a ceasefire is needed “quickly” in the Palestinian territory, the White House said.

The American president has shown strong support for Israel since the start of the war, but he has become increasingly critical as the civilian death toll has mounted.

The war was triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil, which resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to a count by Agence France-Presse based on official Israeli data.

Of the 251 people abducted during the attack, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom have died, according to the army.

Israeli warplanes targeted civilians sitting near their homes

— Ahmed Kahlout

In response, Israel has promised to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organization, as do the United States and the European Union. His army has launched an offensive that has so far killed 39,175 people, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government's health ministry, which gives no indication of the number of civilians and fighters killed.

“Like the dead”

On Thursday, bombings targeted Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the north, where nine people were killed, according to medical sources, as well as Al-Bureij in the center.

Israeli forces also continued operations in Khan Younis and Rafah, in the south.

“Israeli warplanes targeted civilians sitting near their homes,” killing five, Ahmed Kahlout, the local director of Civil Defense, said in Beit Lahia.

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According to witnesses, soldiers blew up apartment buildings in Tal Al-Sultan, a neighborhood in western Rafah, and in Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis.

The army announced that it had “eliminated dozens of terrorists and dismantled approximately 50 terrorist infrastructures” in recent days in Khan Younis.

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Thousands of Palestinians have again fled the bombings, after the army issued evacuation orders covering several sectors of the territory.

With nowhere to go, families have taken refuge in the streets, or, as in Khan Younis, near a cemetery.

“We live next to the dead. We are like the dead. The difference is that we can breathe, they can’t,” said Rytal Motlaq, a displaced person who improvised a shelter with tarpaulins.

Since the start of the war, the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced, many of them multiple times, across the territory besieged by Israel.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is a total disaster,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday. He described “the highest level of casualties and destruction ever seen since [he became] secretary-general,” as well as “a level of humanitarian aid that is completely out of proportion to the needs.”

“Sabotage”

On Thursday, the army said it had recovered the bodies of five Israelis killed on October 7 during an operation in Khan Younis.

It said the bodies of Maya Goren, Ravid Katz and Oren Goldin, who lived on kibbutzim near Gaza, as well as those of two soldiers, Tomer Ahimas and Kiril Brodski, had been brought back to Israel.

Army spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the dead Israelis had been held by Hamas in tunnels “20 meters deep under the city of Khan Younis.”

They were “under an area that had been declared a humanitarian zone by the army,” he added, accusing Hamas of “exploiting” the situation to “keep the hostages captive.”

The Hostage Families Forum, an Israeli group representing relatives held captive in Gaza, on Thursday denounced “sabotage” of efforts to secure the hostages’ release, pointing the finger at Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ceasefire Talks Linked to Release Hostage negotiations, scheduled for Thursday in Qatar, have been postponed until next week, according to a source close to the discussions.

As Washington frets over the war’s human toll, Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected “all the lies” about civilian casualties before Congress, saying the war in Gaza “has one of the lowest ratios of non-combatants killed to combatants in the history of urban warfare.”

In May, the UN said that women and children accounted for at least 56 percent of those killed since the war began, based on data from Hamas’s health ministry.