After complex rescue ops in Gaza, IDF assesses some hostages may never be found

Recent complex military operations in the Gaza Strip to recover the bodies of slain hostages have brought the Israel Defense Forces to the understanding that there is a possibility that some of those abducted by Hamas terrorists on October 7 may never be found, The Times of Israel learned on Tuesday.

The grim assessment comes as 111 of the 251 hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, now for nearly 300 days, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

Last week, during a raid in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, the IDF’s 98th Division along with the Shin Bet recovered the bodies of five hostages who were killed and then kidnapped during the onslaught nearly ten months ago.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said following the operation that though “we were near these bodies before, we didn’t know how to reach out [and recover them]. Now that we knew how to reach out, we did so. We brought five [slain hostages], which otherwise, it’s not certain we would have ever found them.”

The bodies had been buried inside a tunnel some 20 meters belowground in Khan Younis.

According to the military, the bodies were hidden behind a wall in the tunnel, and without exact information on the location — provided by a detained terrorist — it was unlikely they would have been found.

Another such discovery occurred in April with the recovery of the body of hostage Elad Katzir, who had been abducted alive and later murdered by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Gaza. His body was buried in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza, at a site used by terror operatives.

The military obtained visual intelligence on the site where Katzir was held and sent forces there to search for the body, which was located and brought back to Israel for burial.

Katzir’s captors, according to IDF assessments, had all been killed by the military and it was unlikely that anyone else knew where he was being held.

Still, the IDF assesses that as time goes on, the likelihood of it obtaining intelligence on the hostages increases — but the chances of the hostages remaining alive decreases.

The IDF said it has a vast amount of intelligence — obtained during the ground operation in Gaza — that it is deciphering, which may bring leads on the hostages.
Tunnels are key to dismantling Hamas

The IDF believes that eliminating Hamas’s tunnel network will enable a decisive victory over the terror group, but this can only be achieved by ground forces.

The terror group has a vast underground network, which before the ground offensive in Gaza theoretically enabled Hamas operatives to move from the north of the Strip to its south nearly exclusively via the tunnels.

Destroying the tunnels has given the IDF “freedom of action” in Gaza, military officials said.

In Khan Younis, where some 70 kilometers worth of tunnels were demolished, the 98th Division operated for 128 days earlier this year.

In contrast, during an operation to recover the bodies of five hostages last week, the division was able to reach the tunnel where the remains were hidden by Hamas and recover them within 24 hours, and later wrap up the entire raid within eight days, withdrawing from Khan Younis on Tuesday.

In another recent raid carried out by the 98th Division, in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood, troops demolished eight major tunnels in less than two weeks, before withdrawing. An earlier offensive in Shejaiya lasted several months and saw much heavier IDF losses.

The recent fast and effective raids, military officials said, would not have been possible without the previous lengthy operations there, during which it took out most of Hamas’s major tunnel networks, impeding attempts by the terror group to regroup and defend against future IDF actions.

According to the IDF, Hamas has used the tunnels for residing, surviving, and moving about in Gaza — including to launch attacks on troops.

There have been very few gunfights between IDF troops and Hamas gunmen inside the tunnels. Instead, Israeli troops use various methods to surprise the terror operatives and kill them from a distance, or the operatives end up fleeing through the underground network.

On Tuesday, the IDF released a video showing a gunman being killed by an explosive device that troops managed to push into a tunnel.

The IDF prefers to reach tunnels with ground forces to investigate and later destroy them, as airstrikes have in some cases proven ineffective in demolishing underground passages fully. Earlier in the war, the IDF was not entering the tunnels at all, but only demolishing them once it was confirmed no hostages were held there.

The IDF also said it has improved in locating Hamas’s tunnels, but is unlikely to find every last one. According to the military, it has managed to find new tunnels by interrogating captured terror operatives, as well as searching areas from which rockets were launched or where gunmen attacked troops.

On Tuesday, the IDF withdrew the 98th Division from southern Gaza’s Khan Younis after an eight-day raid there.

Amid the operation, the IDF said that troops with the division killed over 150 terror operatives, demolished tunnels and other sites used by Hamas, and recovered the bodies of the five hostages.

The Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday that some 39,400 people had been killed since the start of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, and another 90,996 had been injured. Of that number, it said, 37 had been killed in the past 24 hours.

Hamas does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.

The war erupted on October 7 when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people. The estimated 3,000 terrorists who burst through the boundary also abducted 251 people who were taken as hostages to Gaza.

Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas, topple its Gaza regime, and free the hostages.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border stands at 331. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.

Source » timesofisrael.com