Israeli forces say they have recovered the bodies of three captives held in the Gaza Strip since Hamas’s 2023 attack, the military said, as its bombardment and attacks in the besieged enclave have killed more than 30 Palestinians, according to hospital officials.
The military on Sunday said the bodies of Ofra Keidar, Yonatan Samerano, and soldier Shay Levinson were recovered from Gaza “in a special operation”.
Samerano’s father had announced earlier on Sunday that his 21-year-old son’s body, which was taken into Gaza after he was murdered on October 7, 2023, had been recovered by the Israeli army.
Keidar, a 71-year-old mother of three, was also killed on the day, while 19-year-old tank commander Levinson “engaged and fought terrorists on the morning of October 7 and fell in combat”, a statement from the military said.
More than 1,100 people were killed and about 250 taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities. At least 50 of those captives remain in Gaza, with 20 reportedly still alive, Israeli media say.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the country’s ongoing conflict with Iran would help it win its war in Gaza and return the captives.
“We are getting closer, step by step, to our objectives: defeating Hamas and bringing our hostages home… I am convinced that the operation in Iran is helping us achieve our objective in Gaza,” said Netanyahu.
Hamas has repeatedly said it is ready to release all Israeli captives in exchange for a permanent end to the war on Gaza, the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the enclave, and the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
But Netanyahu has rejected the terms and continued his war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed about 56,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children – a brutal offensive that the United Nations, most governments, and rights groups call a genocide.
More recently, starving Palestinians desperate for food and other essential items are being shot, with more than 400 people killed and nearly 2,000 wounded since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial group backed by the United States and Israel, began distributing aid last month.
Israeli forces killed at least 33 Palestinians since dawn on Sunday, six of them while seeking aid, hospital sources in Gaza told Al Jazeera. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said at least 51 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours.
Since March 18, when Israel broke a fragile two-month ceasefire and launched a massive assault on Gaza, at least 5,647 Palestinians have been killed and 19,201 wounded, according to the ministry.
‘The situation is collapsing and deteriorating’
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said Israeli forces continue to target different residential areas across the enclave and aid distribution points.
“Israeli forces continue to attack aid seekers who have been very close to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution points, where at least seven Palestinians have been killed since this morning,” Khoudary said.
“In hospitals here across the Gaza Strip, the situation is collapsing and deteriorating as Gaza’s hospitals are running out of fuel and also medical supplies.”
Medical services in Gaza say ambulances have completely stopped operating in Gaza City due to Israel’s ban on fuel entering the enclave.
The Israeli blockade of food and medicines has pushed its entire population of more than two million to the brink of starvation.
Another Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza on Sunday said at least six people were killed overnight during an Israel-imposed internet blackout that lasted five hours and was accompanied by heavy Israeli artillery firing targeting areas in eastern and central Gaza.
Three of them were killed after a rocket hit a tent housing displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi to the west of Khan Younis city. A man and his wife were killed in another strike targeting an apartment to the north of Nuseirat.
On Sunday, the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV called on the world not to forget the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as the conflict in the Middle East broadened with overnight US strikes on Iran.
“In this context that includes Israel and Palestine, there is a risk that the daily suffering of peoples is forgotten, in particular in Gaza and other territories, where there is an ever greater urgency for adequate humanitarian aid,” he said.
