Israel’s military announced on Sunday the discovery of six dead hostages in a Gaza tunnel, as medics in the Palestinian territory braced for pauses in fighting for a polio vaccination drive.
The hostages’ remains were recovered on Saturday “from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area” and formally identified in Israel, a military statement said.
The military named them as Hersh Goldberg-Polin – a dual US-Israeli national – Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov – a Russian-Israeli – Almog Sarusi and Master Sergeant Ori Danino.
US President Joe Biden said he was “devastated and outraged” by the deaths.
The six were among 251 hostages seized during Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war, 97 of whom remain captive in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli army says are dead.
‘Murdered in Cold Blood’
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the six hostages whose remains had been retrieved were alive when taken captive.
“They were held hostage by Hamas and murdered in cold blood,” Gallant said in a statement.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari also said all six “were abducted alive on the morning of October 7” and “brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it “bows its head in mourning” for the latest deaths and called for a ceasefire deal.
“Were it not for the delays, sabotage, and excuses those whose deaths we learned about this morning would likely still be alive,” the campaign group said.
In Gaza, Israel pushed on with its deadly offensive in response to Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said it counted 42 people killed in Israeli strikes across the territory on Saturday.
The fighting has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displaced most of its 2.4 million people and triggered a humanitarian crisis.
Hamas’ October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s offensive has killed at least 40,691 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN human rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Three-Day ‘Humanitarian Pauses’
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign since October 7 has reduced Gaza to ruins, devastating water and sanitation facilities, while disease has spread.
Following the first confirmed polio case in the besieged Palestinian territory in 25 years, a Gaza health official said vaccinations began on Saturday in three health centres in central Gaza, a day after an unspecified number of children were vaccinated in the southern area of the Gaza Strip and ahead of a wider campaign.
The World Health Organization says Israel has agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” to facilitate the polio vaccination drive, which an international aid worker told AFP would start in earnest on Sunday.
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Children aged from one-day-old to 10 years arrived at the centres to receive the dose as drones flew overhead, said Yasser Shaabane, medical director of Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza said.
“There are a lot of drones flying over central Gaza and we hope this vaccination campaign for children will be calm,” said Shaabane.
The campaign began at 9:00 am (0600 GMT), he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however has insisted that these pauses were not amounting to any kind of ceasefire in overall fighting in Gaza.
The campaign aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the besieged Palestinian territory, devastated by almost 11 months of war.
The campaign also aims to administer the first dose — two drops — to at least 90 percent of the territory’s children.
Polio, which had been eradicated in Gaza for 25 years, reappeared in the midst of the hostilities that began on October 7 after Hamas attack on southern Israel.
WHO has despatched 1.26 million doses of the oral vaccine to Gaza already.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza has identified 67 vaccination centres — mostly hospitals, smaller health centres and schools — in central Gaza, 59 in southern Gaza and 33 in northern Gaza to administer the doses.
The second dose of the vaccine must be given four weeks after the first.
With AFP
