Gaza Strip: Israel’s army discovers six more dead hostages

The Israeli army says it has found the bodies of six hostages of the radical Islamic Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The armed forces and the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet recovered the bodies on Saturday from a tunnel beneath Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, the army announced on Sunday. All six victims were abducted into the Gaza Strip during the Hamas raid on October 7 last year. “According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” said army spokesman Daniel Hagari in the morning.

The victims are four men: Hersh Goldberg-Polin (23), Alexander Lobanov (32), Almog Sarusi (27) and Ori Danino (25) and two women: Carmel Gat (40) and Eden Jeruschalmi (24). According to the forum of relatives of the abducted, at least five of the six victims were abducted on October 7 from the Nova music festival in the Negev desert, which took place near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Relatives blame government for hostages’ deaths

The Forum of Families of the Hostages and Missing Persons expressed its grief and again called on the Israeli government to declare a ceasefire. “Without the delays, the sabotage and the excuses, the people whose deaths we learned of this morning would probably still be alive,” the group said.

The German ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, wrote on the platform: “We all wake up to the terrible news that six more dead hostages have been found, killed by Hamas.”

During a week-long ceasefire at the end of November, Hamas released 105 hostages. In return, Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners from prisons. The Israeli army was able to free a few hostages, sometimes at a high cost to the Palestinian civilian population in these military operations, for which Israel is internationally criticized as much as for the Gaza war itself. It is not known how many of the hostages remaining in Gaza are still alive.

US President Joe Biden had already announced before the Israeli army had identified the dead that US-Israeli dual citizen Goldberg-Polin was among the dead. Goldberg-Polin’s parents recently recalled their son’s fate at the US Democratic Party convention in Chicago. “Among the hostages are eight American citizens and one of them is our only son,” Goldberg-Polin’s mother Rachel Goldberg said in her speech, which moved several delegates to tears.

Families try to reach hostages in Gaza Strip

On Thursday, Goldberg-Polin’s parents gathered with other hostage relatives at the border with the Gaza Strip. The relatives tried to reach the hostages in the Gaza Strip directly with loudspeaker announcements. “Hersh, it’s Mom,” Rachel Goldberg turned to her son. “I pray to God that he brings you back. Right now. I love you, stay strong.”

In April, Hamas released a video of Goldberg-Polin in which he accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “abandoning” the hostages held by Hamas. According to Israeli media reports, Goldberg-Polin was seriously injured in the attack on the Nova music festival on October 7 and was subsequently kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip.

In the photo, released in April, he is seen wearing a red shirt and sitting on a plastic chair, his left arm amputated. “I wanted to hang out with my friends and instead found myself fighting for my life with severe injuries all over my body,” he says.

In response to the major attack, Israel has been conducting massive military operations in the Gaza Strip since October. According to Hamas figures, which cannot be independently verified, more than 40,600 people have been killed since then.