Overview
- A U.S.-brokered ceasefire freed 20 living hostages, but Hamas failed to return all 28 deceased by Monday’s deadline, fueling public outrage in Israel.
- Israeli forces received four additional bodies Tuesday night, which entered formal forensic identification in Israel.
- Officials and AP-linked reports named three of those remains as hostages Uriel Baruch, Sgt. Tamir Nimrodi and Eitan Levi, while a fourth body has not been linked to a hostage.
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retrieve every deceased hostage, as families and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum condemned political celebrations and gestures in the Knesset.
- Recovery efforts face heavy destruction in Gaza and access constraints, the international task force outlined in the ceasefire has not been operationalized, and Israeli public broadcaster KAN reported plans to reopen Rafah to allow 600 aid trucks.