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Teams from Egyptian authorities and the ICRC have been authorized to locate the bodies of deceased hostages captured during the 7 October attacks, Israeli authorities have verified.

The Israeli government announced that the crews have been allowed to search past the referred to as "yellow line" in the area under the control of military personnel in the Gaza territory.

Hamas has handed over 15 out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered truce agreement, which mandates it to hand over all remains of captives. The organization stated it is now coordinating with Egyptian authorities.

Donald Trump has cautions the organization to start return the remains "quickly, or the additional nations involved in this great peace will intervene".

An Israeli spokesperson said the Egyptian team has been authorized to collaborate with the Red Cross to locate the bodies, and would use digging equipment and vehicles for the search beyond the "demarcation line".

The "demarcation line" indicates the border running along the north, south and eastern of the Gaza territory that Israel pulled back to, as part of the initial phase of the ceasefire deal.

Previously, Israel has not authorized the entry of these crews.

The Egyptian government, along with Qatar and Turkey, is a key signatory of the Trump-brokered peace initiative for Gaza, which was ratified in the Egyptian resort of the resort town earlier this month.

The news will be welcomed by family members, desperate to give them a proper burial.

The ICRC has already been deeply engaged in the return of captives.

The organization does not transfer its detainees - alive or deceased - straight to the Israel Defense Forces, but rather to the ICRC, which in turn escorts them through Gaza and hands them on to the IDF.

But the entry of Egyptian excavation teams inside the Gaza Strip is new.

After more than two years of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the UN calculates that as much as eighty-four percent of the territory has been destroyed completely.

Hamas says it is doing its best to recover remains of captives, but it encounters challenges locating them under debris of buildings bombed out by the Israeli military in the region.

It is now working in coordination with the Egyptian authorities.

On the weekend, an official representative stated that the organization knew where the remains were.

"If Hamas put in greater work, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our captives," the representative commented.

The former president shared on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that measures would be taken if the remains of the hostages who died were not handed back promptly.

"Some of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can hand over now and, for some reason, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their disarming," he remarked.

Trump added: "We will observe what they accomplish over the next 48 hours. I am monitoring the situation with great attention."

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On the weekend, the Israeli leader announced Israel would decide which international troops it would permit as part of a planned international force in the region to help maintain the truce under the former president's initiative.

"We are in control of our security, and we have also stated explicitly regarding international forces that Israel will determine which units are unacceptable to us, and this is how we function and will continue to operate," he declared speaking at the beginning of a government session.

On the end of the week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said "a lot of nations" had volunteered to be part of the force - but noted Israeli authorities would have to be satisfied with those taking part.

This appeared to be a reference to Turkey, amid reports Israeli officials had rejected the nation's involvement.

It remained unclear, however, how this contingent could be deployed without an agreement with the organization.

Israel launched a armed operation in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about twelve hundred individuals and took 251 others as hostages.

No fewer than sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in military actions in the region from that time, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.