Egypt along with International Committee of the Red Cross Join Effort for Hostage Remains in Gaza

Teams from Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to locate the bodies of deceased hostages taken during the October 7th incidents, Israeli authorities have confirmed.

The authorities in Israel stated that the teams have been allowed to search beyond the referred to as "demarcation line" in the area controlled by Israeli forces in Gaza.

The group has handed over 15 out of 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a American-mediated ceasefire deal, which requires it to hand over all remains of captives. The organization said it is now coordinating with officials in Egypt.

Donald Trump has cautions the organization to start return the remains "promptly, or the additional nations involved in this great peace will intervene".

An Israeli spokesperson said the Egyptian team has been authorized to work with the ICRC to find the remains, and would use digging equipment and trucks for the search past the "demarcation line".

The "yellow line" marks the border running along the northern, southern and eastern of Gaza that Israeli forces withdrew to, as part of the first stage of the ceasefire deal.

Until now, Israel has not approved the access of such teams.

Egypt, along with Qatari officials and Turkish authorities, is a principal participant of the mediated by Trump Gaza peace plan, which was signed in the coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month.

The development will be greeted positively by relatives, desperate to give them a dignified funeral.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been deeply engaged in the return of hostages.

Hamas does not hand over its detainees - living or deceased - straight to the IDF, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn accompanies them through the territory and transfers them to the Israeli military.

But the entry of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza territory is a recent development.

After more than two years of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the United Nations calculates that as much as 84% of the territory has been destroyed completely.

Hamas says it is making every effort to retrieve hostage bodies, but it encounters challenges locating them under debris of structures destroyed by the IDF in the region.

It is now working in coordination with the Egyptian authorities.

On Sunday, an official representative stated that the organization was aware of where the remains were.

"If the group made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our hostages," the spokesperson commented.

The former president posted on his social media account on the weekend that action would be taken if the remains of the deceased hostages were not handed back promptly.

"A portion of the remains are difficult to access, but the rest they can hand over at present and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their demilitarization," he said.

He added: "We will observe what they accomplish over the coming two days. I am monitoring the situation very closely."

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On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel would determine which international troops it would permit as part of a planned multinational contingent in the region to help maintain the ceasefire under the former president's initiative.

"We are in command of our safety, and we have also made it clear regarding foreign troops that we will decide which forces are not acceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will proceed," he declared talking at the start of a government session.

On the end of the week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated "numerous countries" had volunteered to be involved in the contingent - but added Israel would have to be comfortable with participants.

This seemed like a allusion to the Turkish government, amid accounts Israel had rejected the nation's participation.

It remained unclear, however, how this contingent could be deployed without an agreement with the organization.

Israel initiated a armed operation in Gaza in response to the incidents of October 7th, in which militants associated with the group killed about 1,200 individuals and took two hundred fifty-one additional persons as hostages.

No fewer than 68,519 have been lost their lives in military actions in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health authorities under the group's control.