Israeli hostage families blame Netanyahu after six bodies recovered from Gaza tunnels

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to conclude a ceasefire deal with Hamas to bring the remaining hostages home from Gaza, as the bodies of six of those taken on 7 October were brought home.

“It’s too late for the abductees who were murdered in cold blood. The abductees who remain in the captivity of Hamas must be returned home,” he said on the social media platform X.

“The political-security cabinet must convene immediately and reverse the decision made on Thursday,” he said, referring to a decision by the cabinet to insist on keeping troops in the so-called Philadelphi corridor, along the southern edge of Gaza.

Netanyahu’s insistence on keeping troops in the corridor to prevent Hamas smuggling weapons in from Egypt, has been widely seen as one of the major obstacles to an agreement with Hamas in talks brokered by Egypt and Qatar.

Gallant has clashed repeatedly with Netanyahu and hardline religious nationalist ministers over the need to reach a deal to halt the fighting in Gaza and bring the remaining hostages back in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Around a third of the 101 Israeli and foreign captives still in Gaza are believed to have died, with the fate of the others unknown.

Israeli media reported that Gallant confronted Netanyahu angrily during the cabinet meeting on Thursday over the issue of the Philadelphi corridor and warned that time was running out for a hostage deal.

The families of the Israeli hostages have blamed Benjamin Netanyahu after the bodies of six captives were recovered from Gaza.

The discovery sparked calls for mass protests by families of the hostages who said their loved ones could have been returned alive in a ceasefire deal.

The Hostage Families Forum called on the Israeli prime minister to take responsibility and explain what was holding up an agreement, as 101 Israeli and foreign captives remain in Gaza, with around two-thirds of these possibly alive.

Speaking of the six, the forum said: “They were all murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, torture, and starvation in Hamas captivity. The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages.”

The recovered bodies were from about 250 hostages captured during the Hamas-led shock incursion into southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza on 7 October last year.

Their deaths leaves 101 Israeli and foreign captives still in Gaza, but around a third of these are known to have died, with the fate of others unknown.

About 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas assault, according to Israeli tallies.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel would not rest until it catches those responsible for the killing of six hostages whose bodies were recovered from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu, in a statement, insisted that Israel was committed to achieving a deal to release remaining hostages and ensure Israel’s security – while he said that whoever kills hostages “does not want a deal”.

Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq on Sunday blamed Israel for the death of hostages, saying Israel was unwilling to reach a deal.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called on Sunday for a strike to shut down the country’s economy in order to pressure the government to reach a deal to release the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip.

Lapid, who is also a former prime minister, called on every Israeli “whose heart was broken this morning” to join a major protest in Tel Aviv later in the day. He also called on Israel’s main labor union, businesses and municipalities to go on strike.

His remarks came after Israel recovered the bodies of six more hostages from captivity in Gaza.

Simon Harris reiterated his call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire following the discovery of the bodies of the six hostages in Rafah, southern Gaza, on Saturday.

Israel has said they were killed shortly before its forces reached the tunnel in which they were found.

Palestinian militants have killed three Israeli police officers when they opened fire on a vehicle in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has carried out large-scale raids in recent days.

The attack took place along a road in the southern West Bank early on Sunday.

The raids have mainly been focused on urban refugee camps in the northern part of the territory, where Israeli forces have traded fire with militants on a near-daily basis since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

The police confirmed all three killed were officers and said the assailants fled.

One of the officers killed was Roni Shakuri, 61, from the southern town of Sderot near the Gaza border, police said. His daughter, Mor, who was also a police officer, was killed in a battle with Hamas militants when they tried to take over Sderot police station during the October 7 attack.

A little-known militant group calling itself the Khalil al-Rahman Brigade claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack, while Hamas praised it as a “natural response” to the war in Gaza and called for more.

The West Bank has seen a surge in violence since Hamas’s 7 October attack out of Gaza ignited the war.

More than 650 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, mainly during Israeli military arrest raids. Most appear to have been militants involved in gun battles with Israeli forces, but civilian bystanders and rock-throwing protesters have also been killed.

The United Nations, in collaboration with Palestinian health authorities, began to give polio vaccinations to 640,000 children in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, with Israel and Hamas agreeing to brief pauses in their 11-month war to allow the campaign to go ahead.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed last month that a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

The campaign began on Sunday in areas of central Gaza, and will move to other areas in coming days. Fighting will pause for at least eight hours on three consecutive days.

The WHO said the pauses will likely need to extend to a fourth day and the first round of vaccinations will take just under two weeks.

Children, escorted by members of their families, crowded a UN-run clinic in the central Gaza city of Deir Al-Balah, where around one million people were sheltering, according to Palestinian officials. Medical staffers marked children who got the drops with a pen on their fingers.

At least 40,738 Palestinians have been killed and 94,154 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the enclave’s health authorities said on Sunday.