Israel Defense Forces troops will continue to put military pressure on the Hamas terrorist organization to release the remaining 109 hostages held in Gaza, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi stated on Tuesday.
“We have a firm determination to fight Hamas, a firm determination to return all the hostages—alive whenever possible—and we will also be very, very determined and persist in bringing the fallen back to a kever Yisrael [Jewish burial],” Halevi told commanders and soldiers of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion during a tour of the coastal enclave.
Halevi’s remarks came amid ongoing indirect negotiations in Doha, Qatar for a hostage release and ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
He spoke just hours after the IDF recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages who were kidnapped alive on Oct. 7, from a Hamas tunnel in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis area.
“Last night, in an operation that did not happen by chance, based on intelligence that was followed for a very long time and was developing, we had information about the location of our fallen hostages,” he said.
IDF soldiers “went to bring them out, 10 meters underground, to reach, dig, locate the tunnel, enter and bring back our people, that we would very much have liked to have brought back alive, but even bringing a body to a Jewish burial is a very, very important task,” Halevi stated.
The top military leader visited Gaza on Tuesday together with IDF Southern Command head Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman and Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, the outgoing commander of the army’s Gaza Division.
During a separate visit to Gaza on Tuesday, Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Amir Baram toured the enclave alongside Brig. Gen. Guy Levy—who was appointed head of the IDF’s 98th Division earlier this month—and Lt. Col. Ami Biton, commander of the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade.
As part of the visit, Baram met with troops of the Paratroopers Brigade, the Yahalom Combat Engineering Unit, and the 7th Brigade. In an exchange with soldiers, Baram expressed his “great appreciation” to all who participated in the operation to retrieve the bodies of the captives.
Baram noted that the operation to rescue the bodies was “a complex, multi-organizational effort, combining various units that together—out of a sense of urgency during the war and when each unit knows how to bring its relative advantage—brought extraordinary operational output.
“We will continue to operate in all areas of the Gaza Strip, above ground and underground, to defeat Hamas and return our hostages,” he added.
Forces of the 162nd Division continue to operate in the Tel Sultan area of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, the military said on Wednesday.
The troops “eliminated dozens of armed terrorists, destroyed terrorist infrastructure and located many weapons including explosives, grenades, Kalashnikov-type rifles and more,” the IDF stated.
Meanwhile, the 98th Division worked in conjunction with the Israeli Air Force to knock down infrastructure, including rocket launchers that were used to target civilian towns in southern Israel, and kill gunmen.
The 252nd Division attacked Hamas buildings that were used to carry out attacks against IDF ground forces in Gaza.
Throughout the day on Tuesday, IAF fighter jets attacked some 30 targets in the Strip, including infrastructure, terror squads, rocket launchers, tunnels and an observation post, the military announced.
IDF forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27 following a weeks-long air campaign in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people, primarily Jewish civilians, were murdered.
Jerusalem’s stated goals for the ongoing campaign are to destroy Hamas as a military and governing force in the Gaza Strip, ensure that the terror group can not threaten the Jewish state again and return all hostages.
