‘Gruesome process’: US president recognises difficulty in recovering bodies of Gaza captives
US President Donald Trump spoke earlier on the difficulty of retrieving the bodies of Israeli captives from destroyed areas in Gaza.
“It’s a gruesome process. I almost hate to talk about it so. But they’re digging. They are actually digging,” Trump told reporters in the White House.
“There are areas where they are digging, and they are finding a lot of bodies. Then they have to separate the bodies. You wouldn’t believe this. And some of those bodies have been in there a long time. And some of them are under rubble. They have to remove rubble,” Trump said.
“Some are in tunnels, that died in tunnels, that are way down under the earth. And the tunnels are like three feet. Can you believe it, three feet high? They lived like this for a long period of time. It’s a horrible atrocity,” he said.
A drone view shows Palestinians walking past rubble following the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from an area in Gaza City, on October 12
Trump is almost getting it, now who made them live like that... Who drove the resistance into tunnels... Who bombed all the houses... (Actually all the pictures I've seen from the tunnels are more than 3ft high, Google Gaza tunnels - images, but sure Trump, 3ft wide you mean)
And of course Trump knows all this as he was boasting in the Knesset about how well Israel used all the weapons he supplied for the genocide, drawing standing ovations in the Knesset.
Where do things stand with the return of deceased Israeli captives?
As we have been reporting, there is uncertainty around the future of the US-brokered ceasefire deal over the return of deceased Israeli captives.
This is what we know:
- Israel has told Washington the ceasefire’s next phase cannot proceed until Hamas returns all the bodies of captives from Gaza.
- The Israeli military said it received two more coffins from the Red Cross in northern Gaza late on Wednesday night. Those bodies have been sent for forensic identification.
- Of the 28 bodies due to be returned under the ceasefire deal, only nine have been handed over so far.
- Israeli authorities also said that forensic examination showed that a body handed over by Hamas was not that of a captive.
- Israel has warned it could keep the Rafah border crossing shut and reduce aid supplies entering Gaza over what it claimed was Hamas returning bodies too slowly.
- Hamas said it has fulfilled its commitments under President Trump’s Gaza plan by handing over all living Israeli captives and the bodies of deceased captives that it could “access”.
- The Palestinian group and the Red Cross have said recovering the remains of dead captives is challenging due to Gaza’s destruction, while some remains are in areas controlled by Israeli forces.
- An unnamed senior US adviser told reporters that Hamas had offered assurances it would do everything possible to locate and return the remains.
- The adviser also said rewards may be offered to provide an incentive to Gaza civilians to provide information they may have to locate remains.
