JERUSALEM — The army Israeli indicated that its troops in Gaza they found the corpses of three Israelis who were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists during their raid on October 7, among them the young German-Israeli Shani Louk.
A photograph of the body of 22-year-old Louk in the back of a pickup truck went around the world and brought to light the magnitude of the attack carried out by Hamas terrorists in communities in southern Israel. The terrorists placed their feet on the corpse while a crowd spat on her just for being Israeli.
The military identified the other two bodies found as those of a 28-year-old woman, Amit Buskila, and a 56-year-old man, Itzhak Gelerenter.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the three were killed while fleeing a Hamas attack on the Nova music festival, an open-air event near the Gaza border where the militant group killed hundreds of people. people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deaths “heartbreaking” and said: “We will return all our hostages, both the living and the dead.”
The Israeli military has only reported that the bodies were found overnight, and has not revealed details about where they were found. Israel has been operating in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where it has said there are hostages, according to information it has.
The terrorist group killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 250 more in the October 7 attack. About half of them have since been freed, most in exchanges for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel during a week-long ceasefire in November.
There are still more than 100 Israelis in the hands of the terrorists, held captive in Gaza, as well as the bodies of about 30 more. The Hamas attack started the war. Hamas claims that 35,000 Palestinians have died in the attack, but no independent body has confirmed those figures.
Netanyahu has vowed to eliminate Hamas and bring back all the hostages, but has made little progress. He faces pressure to resign, while in the United States, the Joe Biden administration has threatened to reduce its support in the wake of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, pressured by the radical wing of the Democratic Party who have warned that they will not give him the vote in next November’s elections.
Israelis are divided into two main camps: Those who want the government to agree to a ceasefire and negotiate the release of the hostages, and others who think the hostages are an unfortunate price to pay for eradicating Hamas. Intermittent negotiations mediated by Qatar, the United States and Egypt have yielded few results.
Source: With information from AP
