The Israeli army said on Friday it had recovered the bodies of three victims of an Oct. 7 Hamas attack in an overnight operation in northern Gaza, raising further concerns about the fate of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza.
Israeli authorities identified the three hostages as Hanan Yablonka, 42, Michel Nisenbaum, 59, and Orion Hernandez Radu, a dual French-Mexican citizen. Israeli military spokesman Maj. Gen. Daniel Hagari said they were killed in a Hamas-led attack on October 7 and that Hamas fighters had taken their bodies back to Gaza.
According to Israeli officials, there are currently about 125 hostages, dead or alive, remaining in Gaza, and ceasefire talks that would guarantee their release have stalled. Israel and Hamas have been in indirect talks for months trying to hammer out an agreement, but those talks collapsed in early May.
The Israeli Prime Minister's Office said on Thursday that the War Cabinet had ordered negotiating teams to continue talks to reach an agreement, but that prospect seems slim as Israel continues its operations in Rafah, southern Gaza. Some hostage families have increasingly criticized the Israeli government for not doing enough to reach a deal.
“The recovery of the hostages' bodies is a quiet but firm reminder that the State of Israel is obligated to immediately send a negotiating team with the clear demand that an agreement be reached to quickly return all hostages home,” said the Hostage Families Forum, a group representing the hostages' families.
Over the past week, seven bodies recovered by Israeli troops and intelligence officers have been brought back to Israel for burial, including that of Radu's partner, Shani Luke, a dual Israeli-German citizen who has become a symbol of the brutality of Hamas attacks. Most of the seven hostages brought back had their presumed deaths not publicly announced by Israeli authorities.
All the bodies were found in Jabalia, where Israel has been conducting an operation since the beginning of this month to quell a Hamas insurgency. The Israeli military said the four bodies, including that of Luke, had been placed in an underground tunnel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly mourned the deaths of the three hostages and vowed to “do everything we can” to bring the remaining captives home.
Nisenbaum, a volunteer paramedic from Brazil, lived in the Israeli city of Sderot, near the Gaza border. On the morning of October 7, Nisenbaum set out to rescue her 4-year-old granddaughter, who was with her father at Reim military base, which was under heavy Hamas attack, according to Admiral Hagari. But he never made it because Palestinian militants ambushed him on the road, Nisenbaum said.
Yablonka and Radu had been attending the Tribe of Nova trance music festival near Kibbutz Reim. Palestinian militants opened fire on Israeli civilians at the festival as they fled across fields, in cars, or tried to take cover in nearby bomb shelters. At least 360 people were killed in the attack, according to Israeli authorities.