Israeli military recovers bodies of 6 hostages in Gaza operation

The Israeli military recovered the bodies of six more hostages who were being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday morning.

In an overnight operation, the Israel Defense Forces said it recovered the bodies of Yagev Buchshtab, 35, Alexander Dancyg, 76, Avraham Munder, 79, Yoram Metzger, 80, Nadav Popplewell, 51, and Haim Perry, 80, from the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza.

The IDF said the operation was conducted with the help of information from Israeli intelligence services but did not provide further details. The Israeli military had previously announced publicly that five of the hostages were believed to be dead and their bodies held by Hamas in Gaza.

Netanyahu expressed condolences for the families in a statement. “The State of Israel will continue to make every effort to return all of our hostages — the living and the deceased,” he said.

In a statement Tuesday, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum — an umbrella group representing loved ones of the roughly 250 hostages abducted by Hamas and other armed groups on Oct. 7 — said there were still 109 hostages, alive and dead, in the Gaza Strip.

“Israel has a moral and ethical obligation to return all the murdered for dignified burial and to bring all living hostages home for rehabilitation,” the organization said in a statement. “The Israeli government, with the assistance of mediators, must do everything in its power to finalize the deal currently on the table.”

According to its statement, four of the hostages whose bodies were recovered — Dancyg, Munder, Metzger and Perry — were from Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel less than two miles from the Gaza border. On Oct. 7, Hamas fighters overran the tiny community, kidnapping many of the residents and taking them to Gaza.

Popplewell and Buchshtab were both taken from their homes in Kibbutz Nirim, where the forum said they both lived.