Israeli troops have retrieved the bodies of three hostages kidnapped by Hamas, including the boyfriend of German-Israeli Shani Louk.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Friday that the troops had managed to recover the bodies of Michel Nisenbaum, 59, Hanan Yablonka, 42, and Orion Hernandez Radoux, 30, from Gaza.
They were captured by Hamas militants during the Oct 7 attack on a rave festival in southern Israel near the Gaza border.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday offered his condolences to the family of Radoux, who is a dual French-Mexican national, saying France is “more than ever” committed to the release of all hostages.
Radoux was dating Shani Louk, a victim of the massacre whose dead, half-naked body was seen being hauled away by the attackers into Gaza.
Louk’s remains were recovered from the same area in northern Gaza just last week. Her parents buried her on Sunday.
Unlike Louk, the three other hostages were not previously identified as dead.
The IDF said the bodies were found in a joint operation with the security agency Shin Bet after information was obtained following the questioning of several Palestinians arrested in Gaza.
It was not immediately clear if the three men were killed at the party or later in an underground tunnel where their bodies were found.
Jabaliya, home to a historic Palestinian refugee camp, was the epicentre of fighting for weeks last year, parts of it utterly destroyed by Israeli bombardment.
Having withdrawn from the north months ago, the IDF returned to operate in Jabaliya earlier this month.
The IDF said earlier on Friday its troops in Jabaliya conducted “targeted raids on terrorist infrastructure” in the area, killing “dozens” of fighters, and destroying launch posts and underground shafts.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Friday offered his condolences to the families and pledged to bring back the others, both dead and the living.
“We have a national and moral duty to do everything we can to return our hostages – the living and the deceased – and that is what we are doing,” he said in a statement.
A group advocating for the hostages and their families on Friday referred to the operation as yet another reminder of the hostages’ plight.
“The recovery of their bodies is a silent but resolute reminder that the State of Israel is obligated to immediately dispatch negotiation teams with a clear demand to bring about a deal that will swiftly return all the hostages home: the living for rehabilitation and the murdered for burial,” the Hostages’ Families Forum said.
Talks on a possible hostage release in exchange for a ceasefire broke down in early May.
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