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Teams from Egyptian authorities and the ICRC have been authorized to locate the remains of deceased hostages taken during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have verified.

The authorities in Israel stated that the teams have been allowed to operate beyond the so-called "demarcation line" in the region controlled by military personnel in the Gaza territory.

The group has transferred 15 out of twenty-eight hostages who lost their lives under the first phase of a American-mediated ceasefire deal, which requires it to transfer all remains of captives. The organization said it is now coordinating with Egyptian authorities.

Donald Trump has warned Hamas to begin returning the remains "promptly, or the additional nations involved in this great peace will intervene".

An Israeli spokesperson said the crew from Egypt has been permitted to work with the ICRC to find the remains, and would use digging equipment and vehicles for the search past the "yellow line".

The "yellow line" indicates the border running along the northern, southern and eastern of the Gaza territory that Israeli forces pulled back to, as part of the initial phase of the ceasefire deal.

Previously, Israeli authorities has not authorized the access of these crews.

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

The news will be greeted positively by family members, desperate to give them a dignified funeral.

The ICRC has already been heavily involved in the return of captives.

The organization does not hand over its detainees - alive or deceased - straight to the IDF, but instead to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through the territory and transfers them to the IDF.

But the arrival of Egyptian excavation teams inside the Gaza Strip is a recent development.

After more than 24 months of heavy shelling by Israel, the United Nations estimates that as much as eighty-four percent of the territory has been reduced to rubble.

The group says it is doing its best to recover remains of captives, but it faces difficulty finding them under debris of structures destroyed by the IDF in the region.

It is now working in coordination with the Egyptian authorities.

On Sunday, an official representative said that Hamas was aware of where the remains were.

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

Trump posted on his social media account on the weekend that measures would be taken if the bodies of the deceased hostages were not returned promptly.

"Some of the remains are difficult to access, but others they can return at present and, for some reason, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their demilitarization," he remarked.

He added: "We will observe what they accomplish over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely."

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On Sunday, the Israeli leader announced the country would decide which international troops it would allow as part of a proposed international force in the region to help secure the truce under the former president's initiative.

"We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that we will decide which units are unacceptable to us, and this is how we function and will proceed," 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 offered to be part of the contingent - but added Israeli authorities would have to be comfortable with participants.

This appeared to be a reference to Turkey, amid accounts Israel had rejected the country's participation.

It was still uncertain, however, how this contingent could be stationed without an agreement with the organization.

The Israeli military initiated a armed operation in the territory in following the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about twelve hundred people and captured two hundred fifty-one additional persons as hostages.

No fewer than sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been lost their lives in Israeli attacks in Gaza from that time, according to the area's Hamas-run health ministry.