Israeli president says ‘entire nation is shattered’
President Isaac Herzog said: “The heart of an entire nation is shattered to pieces. I embrace their families with all my heart, and apologise for failing to bring them home safely.”
There was no immediate comment from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure at home and abroad to reach a ceasefire deal that includes the release of remaining hostages.
Hamas did not immediately comment on the accusations.
Israeli defence minister says hostages were ‘murdered in cold blood’
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said the six hostages whose remains had been retrieved were alive when taken captive, AFP reports.
“They were held hostage by Hamas and murdered in cold blood,” Gallant said in a statement.
The Israeli military said Sunday that it had found the bodies of six hostages in a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, including a US-Israeli and a Russian-Israeli.
Their remains were recovered Saturday “from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area” and returned to Israel where they were formally identified, the military said.
It said the dead hostages were Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino, who were all seized by Palestinian militants during Hamas’s 7 October.
They were among 251 people taken hostage during the October 7 attack, 97 of whom remain captive in Gaza including 33 the Israeli army says are dead.
The news of the discovery of the bodies brought calls for a mass protest from a hostage family organisation which blamed the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for failing to agree a hostage-for-peace deal with Hamas that has been under negotiation for several months. The country would “tremble” the organisation warned.
There was no immediate statement from Netanyahu on Sunday morning but Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, said that nation would continue the fight Hamas while putting a priority on rescuing the remaining hostages.
“The blood of our brothers cries out to us,” Herzog said. “Our sisters and brothers are still there enduring Hell. The supreme covenant between the state and its citizens is to ensure their safety. We have the sacred and urgent mission to bring them home.”
The discovery of the bodies leaves 101 hostages still unaccounted for in Gaza. Many of those are thought to have died however in over 10 months of war in Gaza, since the October attack by Hamas on Israel.
The Israeli military (IDF) first reported on Saturday night that bodies had been found “during combat” but said work was still underway in extracting the remains and then identifying them.
“The IDF and ISA send their heartfelt condolences to the families. The IDF and Israeli security forces are operating with all means to bring home all the hostages as fast as possible.”
An organisation representing many relatives of the abductees, the Hostage Families Forum, called for a nationwide protest against the Netanyahu government, which it has long accused of dragging its feet over a hostage deal with Hamas that the US and its regional allies have been trying to broker since the end of May.
“Netanyahu abandoned the abductees. This is now a fact,” the forum said in a statement issued on Saturday night when the first reports emerged of bodies having been found. “Starting tomorrow the country will tremble. We call on the public to prepare to bring the country to a standstill.”
“These six individuals were taken alive, endured the horrors of captivity, and were then coldly murdered,” the organisation said in a later statement on Sunday. “A deal for the return of the hostages has been on the table for over two months. Were it not for the delays, sabotage, and excuses those whose deaths we learned about this morning would likely still be alive.”
Biden vows ‘Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes’
US president Joe Biden vowed that “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages”.
Vice-president Kamala Harris said in a statement: “I strongly condemn Hamas’ continued brutality, and so must the entire world.”
Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, said she and Biden would never waver in their commitment to free the Americans and all those held hostage in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters earlier in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Biden said he was “still optimistic” about a ceasefire deal to stop the conflict.
“I think we’re on the verge of having an agreement,” he said. “It’s time this war ended.” Biden added that “people are continuing to meet.”
“We think we can close the deal, they’ve all said they agree on the principles.”
The family of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin issued a statement on his death after his body was discovered by Israeli military in Gaza along with the bodies of five other hostages.
“With broken hearts, the Goldberg-Polin family is devastated to announce the death of their beloved son and brother, Hersh,” it said. “The family thanks you all for your love and support and asks for privacy at this time.”
US president Joe Biden, who had met with Goldberg-Polin’s parents, said they “have been courageous, wise and steadfast, even as they have endured the unimaginable”.
“They have been relentless and irrepressible champions of their son and of all the hostages held in unconscionable conditions. I admire them and grieve with them more deeply than words can express,” Biden said.
Goldberg-Polin was one of the best-known hostages as his parents had met with world leaders and pressed relentlessly for their help. Last month, they addressed the Democratic national convention, where the crowd chanted “bring them home”.
The Israeli military has confirmed the bodies of six hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October have been recovered from a tunnel in the Rafah area of the Gaza Strip, Reuters reports.
The bodies of Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Ori Danino were brought to Israel, the IDF said in a statement.
“According to our initial estimation, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters in a briefing.
Hamas and its armed wing did not immediately comment on the accusations.
US president Joe Biden issued a statement confirming the news.
“Earlier today, in a tunnel under the city of Rafah, Israeli forces recovered six bodies of hostages held by Hamas,” Biden said. “I am devastated and outraged.”
The family of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin also issued a statement early on Sunday saying he had been killed in the Gaza Strip.
“With broken hearts, the Goldberg-Polin family is devastated to announce the death of their beloved son and brother, Hersh,” it said. “The family thanks you all for your love and support and asks for privacy at this time.”
Read our full report here:
Welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider crisis in the Middle East.
Israeli military says the bodies of six hostages abducted by Hamas during the 7 October attack have been recovered in a tunnel in the Rafah area of the Gaza Strip, Reuters reports.
The bodies of Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Ori Danino were brought to Israel, it said in a statement.
The family of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin confirmed early Sunday that he had been killed in the Gaza Strip.
More details on those stories shortly, in other key developments:
Gaza’s heath ministry has begun a multi-day campaign to vaccinate children against polio and prevent the spread of the virus. Inoculations started a day before the large-scale rollout on Sunday and coincides with a humanitarian pause agreed by Israel and Hamas.
Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least 48 people in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian health authorities said, as clashes took place in central and southern areas of the territory. On Saturday, as more than 2,000 medical and community workers prepared for the start of the vaccination campaign, medics in Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, said separate Israeli strikes killed at least 19 people, including nine members of the same family. More than 30 other people were killed in a series of strikes in other areas of Gaza, medics said.
Israel’s military said its forces killed two people in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, after one infiltrated an Israeli settlement and another shot at soldiers after his car exploded, Reuters reports.
At least 40,691 Palestinians have been killed and 94,060 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a regular update on Saturday.
The World Health Organization has said it has already delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century. The WHO said that Israel’s military and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for the first round of vaccinations of 640,000 children against polio.
The director-general of the WHO has called for a ceasefire ahead of plans to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza against polio. “Humanitarian pauses are welcome, but ultimately, the only solution to safeguard the health of the children of Gaza is a ceasefire,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.
The UK is “deeply concerned” by Israel’s military operation in West Bank and “deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed”, a statement from the Foreign Office said.
Israeli border police killed a senior Hamas commander in the West Bank and two Hamas gunmen on Friday, the Israeli military said. The Israeli military said its troops identified and killed Hamas leader, Wassem Hazem, while he was driving. When two others in the car - whom the military also identified as militants – attempted to flee, troops killed both in an airstrike.
The Israeli military said on Friday it had wrapped up a month-long operation in southern and central Gaza that it said killed more than 250 Palestinian fighters. “The troops of the 98th Division have completed their divisional operation in the Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah area, after about a month of simultaneous above and underground operational activity,” a military statement said.
A broader regional war in the Middle East where conflict already rages between Hamas and Israel remains a “significant risk”, the head of the UN peacekeeping force warned on Friday. United Nations undersecretary-general for peace operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said: “There is still a very significant risk of escalation at the regional level. We are still very much in a very, very dangerous type of situation.”
The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has launched a process that could lead to sanctions on Israeli ministers he said were responsible for “unacceptable hate messages” against Palestinians. Borrell said he had begun consultations with the EU’s 27 member states on whether they consider it “appropriate including in our list of sanctions some Israeli ministers [who] have been launching unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians” and made proposals that “go clearly against international law” and incite war crimes.