JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The bodies of five Israeli hostages taken from the Gaza Strip this week were being kept in a tunnel deep underground, the Israeli military said on Thursday.
The retrieval operation was carried out using intelligence gathered and analyzed in recent weeks, military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said. It took place “in the heart” of the town of Khan Younis, where Israeli forces resumed operations this week, he said.
The hostages' bodies were hidden “in a branching tunnel about 200 meters long and about 20 meters underground,” Hagari said.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces recovered the bodies of five hostages who were killed in the October 7 Hamas attack and taken to Gaza, where they have been held ever since. Among them were a kindergarten teacher taken from her kibbutz in southern Israel and four reserve and conscript soldiers who had tried to repel the Hamas attack.
(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
