Israel has to agree a Gaza ceasefire deal now and bring the hostages home “before they all die,” families of captives have urged – as the military announced it had retrieved the bodies of six more captives, including a British-Israeli citizen.
The call from officials and came as US secretary of state Antony Blinken was in Egypt – before heading to Qatar – seeking to keep the truce talks on track, while inside Gaza itself at least 12 people were killed in an airstrike on a school housing displaced people in northern Gaza City, the local civilian defence authority said. Israel said it had targeted a Hamas command centre in the school.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called out prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not acting quic saying that a ceasefire deal was needed now. “Enough with the briefings, enough with the tweets, enough with the rhymes in front of cameras. All of Netanyahu’s attempts to sabotage the negotiations should stop. A deal now, before they all die.”
Earlier in the day, Israeli army said that its forces reclaimed the bodies of the six hostages in an overnight operation in southern Gaza. It identified them as Nadav Popplewell, 51 who was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, Yagev Buchshtab, 35, Alexander Dancyg, 76 Avraham Munder, 79 Yoram Metzger, 80 and Haim Perry, 80.
The call for a deal was was backed by families and friends of those whose bodies were recovered. Adele Raemer, 69, a British Israeli English teacher from Nirim who was a neighbour and friend of Popplewell said: “We need to start bringing home people alive and not dead – and that needs to happen soon.”
Raemer, who lived just three doors down from Mr Popplewell’s family in Kibbutz Nirim described him as a “quiet man, [a] kind soul”
“The Israeli military has already done a lot of damage in Gaza, and I expect progress. [The hostages] have been there long enough,” she said.
Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat, 39, is among the remaining hostages, said the news that all six hostages were confirmed dead and the bodies returned was “devastating” for the families of those who are still held in the bombarded strip.
“It shows how urgent it is to get the others out. There are still tens of hostages held in [Hamas’s] tunnels who may be breathing their last breath now,” he told The Independent. “It’s unjust that we have let them rot for more than 300 day, with no solution on the horizon.”
Calling it a “global obligation” to get them out, Mr Dickmann also criticised Mr Netanyahu for suggesting there may be no hostage deal on the table.
“If we don’t push for a deal now we are going to lose the lives of more hostages. Tt’s not too late to save many of them.
“These six hostages should have been saved if there had been a deal on time in November. There are tens of hostages that are alive and in the hands of Hamas – if we don’t act quickly… they will share the same fate” .
In May, Hamas released a video claiming that Mr Popplewell, who was among the 250 people taken hostage during its 7 October attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people, died after being wounded in an Israeli airstrike in April.
A month later the Israeli military confirmed Mr Popplewell’s death saying he was among four hostages “killed while together in the area of Khan Younis during our operation there against Hamas.” Mr Popplewell, who was diabetic, was captured with his mother from her home. His brother was killed during the attack. His mother Channah Peri, 79 years old at at the time, was one of around 100 hostages released in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel during a week-long temporary ceasefire in November.
In a statement about the recovery of the bodies, Mr Netanyahu said “our hearts ache for the terrible loss.”
Inside Gaza, the Civil Defence authority, first responders operating under the Hamas-run government, said rescuers were struggling to recover a number of missing people believed to be trapped under the rubble at Mustafa Hafez school in the western Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City after the Israeli strike. Among dead was Hamza Murtaja a Palestinian journalist whose family said he produced news reports from Gaza for multiple foreign media outlets.
Moatassim Murtaja said his brother Hamza had gone to the school to record interviews with some of the 700 displaced civilians who were sheltering there.
“The Israeli military bombed the school as he was working. I called the civil defence to find out what happened and they told me my brother had been killed,” he told The Independent. He said his other brother Yasser Murtaja, also a journalist, had been killed in 2018 while covering the “Great March of Return” mass protests by border wall with Israel.
“I am begging the world to stop the violence and the killing of the journalists. This the second brother who is a journalist that I have lost.”
The Israeli military said in a statement that aircraft had conducted a “a precise strike” on militants “operating within a Hamas command and control centre” which had been embedded inside the school and used to plan and launch attacks against its troops and Israel. It said “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Israel also continued its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip, with further intense fire reported overnight in the city of Khan Younis.
Palestinian civilians fleeing the area told The Independent: “Even in the so-called humanitarian areas which aren’t under evacuation orders the drones were shooting everywhere, we had bullet holes in our tent,” said Ahmad*, following evacuation orders from the Israeli military that have been placed twice in the last week.
He asked for his name not to be mentioned for fear of his security. “We had to flee by foot as there were so many cars blocking the road”.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that has followed the Hamas attack has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according health officials in the strip. Air and ground operations have caused an unprecedented level of destruction and forced the vast majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents to flee their homes, many multiple times.
In Egypt, Mr Blinken met President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose country has been helping mediate the on-off Gaza talks for months along with the US and Qatar. Mr Sisi said after the meeting that it was time to put an end to the war and warned of the conflict expanding in the region, with the Middle East still waiting for Iran to retaliate against the killing of a Hamas leader on its soil, an assassination it blames on Israel.
But challenges clearly remain over a deal. Mr Netanyahu is said to have told a group of families of fallen soldiers and hostages in Gaza that oppose a ceasefire deal that he is “not sure there will be a deal,” according to a statement from the group. Mr Netanyahu’s office did not comment.
Meanwhile, Hamas in a new statement called the latest proposal presented to it a “reversal” of what it agreed to previously, and accused Washington of acquiescing to what it called “new conditions” from Israel.