Share and Follow
Israeli authorities have found the remains of three captives who were kept in the Gaza Strip since the assault carried out by the Palestinian extremist organization Hamas in 2023, confirmed the military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend.
The hostages were identified as civilians Ofra Keidar and Yonatan Samerano, and soldier Shay Levinson.
All were killed on the day of the attack, on October 7, 2023, the military said.
With their retrieval, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
The abduction of Samerano, 21 at the time of his death, by a man later identified by Israeli officials as a worker at the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, was caught on CCTV.
Around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.
The subsequent Israeli campaign against Hamas in Gaza has since killed more than 55,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run strip, displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population, plunged the enclave into humanitarian crisis and left much of the territory in ruins.