Hamas said Sunday it had expanded its search for the bodies of hostages to new areas of the Gaza Strip, a day after Egypt sent experts and heavy equipment to assist in the recovery effort.
Under the fragile U.S.-brokered cease-fire, reached on Oct. 10, Hamas is expected to return all of the remains Israeli hostages as soon as possible. Israel agreed to give back 15 bodies of Palestinians for every body of a hostage.
Thus far, Israel has sent back the bodies of 195 Palestinians. Hamas has since returned 18 bodies of hostages, but failed to release any in the past five days.
An Egyptian team and heavy equipment, including an excavator and bulldozers, entered Gaza Saturday to help search for the hostages’ bodies, part of efforts by international mediators to shore up the cease-fire, two Egyptian officials said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Hamas' chief in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, said the Palestinian resistance group started searching in new areas for 13 bodies of hostages that remain in the enclave, according to comments shared by the group early Sunday.
U.S. President Donald Trump warned Saturday that he was "watching very closely" to ensure Hamas returns more bodies within the next 48 hours. "Some of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can return now and, for some reason, they are not," he claimed on Truth Social.
Al-Hayya, who is also Hamas' top negotiator, told an Egyptian media outlet last week that efforts to retrieve the bodies faced challenges because of the massive destruction, burying them deep underground.
Israeli forces struck the central Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza on Saturday night, for the second time in a week, according to Awda Hospital that received the wounded.
The Israeli military claimed it targeted members associated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, who were allegedly planning to attack Israeli troops.
Islamic Jihad, the second largest resistance group in Gaza, denied it was preparing for an attack.
Hamas called the strike a "clear violation" of the cease-fire agreement and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attempting to sabotage Trump’s efforts to end the war.
"Of course, we also thwart dangers as they are being formed, before they are carried out, as we did just yesterday in the Gaza Strip," Netanyahu said in response to the strike, at the start of his weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday.
Netanyahu stressed that Israel remained firmly in charge of its own security, after accusations swirled last week that the Trump administration was dictating the terms of Israel's response to security concerns in Gaza. Vice President JD Vance denied any such speculation during his visit.
Israel targeted the same area of Nuseirat in a series of strikes on Oct. 19, after the military accused Hamas members of killing two Israeli soldiers.
That day, Israel launched dozens of deadly strikes across Gaza, killing at least 36 Palestinians, including women and children, according to the strip's health authorities. It was the most serious challenge to the fragile cease-fire.
Saturday's strike in Nuseirat came a few hours after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio left Israel, the latest in a series of top U.S. officials to visit Israel and a new center for civilian and military coordination that is attempting to oversee the cease-fire.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance was in Israel earlier this week, and U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, were also in Israel.
Rubio said Saturday, en route to Qatar, that Israel, the U.S. and the other mediators of the Gaza cease-fire deal are sharing information to disrupt any threats and that allowed them to identify a possible impending attack last weekend.
Around 200 U.S. troops are working alongside the Israeli military and delegations from other countries at the coordination center, planning the stabilization and reconstruction of Gaza.
