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Units from Egyptian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to search for the bodies of deceased hostages captured during the October 7th incidents, officials in Israel have verified.

The Israeli government announced that the teams have been permitted to search past the so-called "yellow line" in the area controlled by military personnel in the Gaza territory.

Hamas has handed over fifteen out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a American-mediated truce agreement, which mandates it to transfer all remains of captives. The organization said it is now coordinating with officials in Egypt.

Donald Trump has warned the organization to start return the bodies "promptly, or the additional nations participating in this significant peace will take action".

An official representative indicated the Egyptian team has been authorized to collaborate with the ICRC to locate the bodies, and would use excavator machines and vehicles for the search beyond the "yellow line".

The "demarcation line" marks the boundary running along the north, southern and east of the Gaza territory that Israeli forces pulled back to, as part of the first stage of the truce agreement.

Previously, Israel has not approved the access of such teams.

The Egyptian government, along with Qatari officials and Turkey, is a key signatory of the mediated by Trump Gaza peace plan, which was ratified in the coastal city of the resort town in recent weeks.

The development will be greeted positively by relatives, desperate to provide a proper burial.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the return of hostages.

Hamas does not transfer its detainees - living or deceased - straight to the IDF, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn accompanies them through Gaza and transfers them to the Israeli military.

But the entry of Egyptian excavation teams inside the Gaza territory is a recent development.

After more than 24 months of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the United Nations estimates that as much as 84% of the area has been reduced to rubble.

Hamas claims it is doing its best to retrieve hostage bodies, but it faces difficulty locating them under rubble of structures bombed out by the IDF in the region.

It is now coordinating with the Egyptian authorities.

On the weekend, an official representative stated that Hamas was aware of where the bodies were.

"If the group made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our captives," the representative commented.

The former president shared on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that measures would be implemented if the remains of the hostages who died were not returned quickly.

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

He continued: "Let's see what they do over the coming two days. I am monitoring the situation very closely."

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On the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the country would decide which foreign forces it would permit as part of a planned international force in Gaza to help secure the truce under the former president's initiative.

"We are in control of our safety, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will decide which units are unacceptable to us, and this is how we function and will continue to operate," he declared talking at the start of a government session.

On Friday, the American diplomat indicated "numerous nations" had volunteered to be part of the force - but added Israel would have to be comfortable with those taking part.

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

It was still uncertain, however, how such a force could be deployed without an understanding with Hamas.

Israel initiated a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about 1,200 individuals and captured two hundred fifty-one additional persons as hostages.

At least sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the area's health authorities under the group's control.