The Israeli military said on Sunday that six bodies found in Gaza were hostages who had been “brutally murdered” by Hamas, setting off a wave of nationwide grief mixed with anger.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesman, said the bodies had been recovered a day earlier from a tunnel underneath the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, close to where a seventh hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, was found alive last week.
“They were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” Admiral Hagari said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “shocked to the depths” of his soul by what he called the “coldblooded murder” of the hostages.
“The heart of the entire nation is torn,” he said in a statement.
In an initial statement, Hamas did not directly address the accusations, but said responsibility for the deaths lay with Israel, which it blamed for the lack of an agreement to stop the fighting in Gaza. Hamas later claimed in a separate statement, without providing evidence, that the hostages were killed by the Israeli military’s bullets.
Some people in Israel also angrily blamed the government for the deaths, calling for protests over the government’s inability to secure a deal to bring the hostages home.
Israeli military officials had said on Saturday that six bodies were found during a military operation, without specifying whether they were hostages’ bodies.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said Sunday on CNN that the grim discovery was not the result of a “specific mission to release hostages,” but that Israeli forces had “some idea of hostages being held in the area.”
The dead were identified as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino. They ranged in age from 23 to 40, according to a group representing families of hostages.
Five of those captured had been at a dance music festival in southern Israel. The sixth, Ms. Gat, was taken from the nearby village of Be’eri.
Before the Israeli military’s announcement, President Biden issued a statement saying that Israel had found the bodies of six hostages, identifying one as Mr. Goldberg-Polin, a dual Israeli American citizen whose parents had campaigned around the world for the release of the captives.
“I am devastated and outraged. Hersh was among the innocents brutally attacked while attending a music festival for peace in Israel,” Mr. Biden said. “He lost his arm helping friends and strangers during Hamas’s savage massacre. He had just turned 23.”
Mr. Biden vowed to keep working toward an agreement to secure the release of the hostages. But he also issued a warning: “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.”
Mr. Goldberg-Polin was among the roughly 250 people who were abducted by Hamas and its allies during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. He was last seen in a video released by Hamas in April.
On Sunday, the Goldberg-Polin family confirmed his death “with broken hearts.”
The Israeli military said that the bodies of the six hostages were returned to Israeli territory.
More than 60 living hostages, and the bodies of about 35 other hostages believed to be dead, are still in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
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