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Teams from Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been authorized to locate the bodies of hostages who perished taken during the 7 October attacks, Israeli authorities have verified.

The Israeli government announced that the crews have been permitted to search beyond the referred to as "demarcation line" in the area under the control of military personnel in Gaza.

Hamas has handed over 15 out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal, which requires it to transfer all remains of captives. The group stated it is now working together with Egyptian authorities.

Donald Trump has warned the organization to begin returning the bodies "promptly, or the other countries involved in this significant peace will intervene".

An official representative indicated the crew from Egypt has been permitted to work with the Red Cross to find the remains, and would use digging equipment and trucks for the search beyond the "demarcation line".

The "demarcation line" marks the boundary running along the north, southern and east of Gaza that Israel withdrew to, as part of the initial phase of the ceasefire deal.

Previously, Israel has not approved the access of these crews.

The Egyptian government, along with Qatari officials and Turkey, is a principal participant of the Trump-brokered Gaza peace plan, which was ratified in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in recent weeks.

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

The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been deeply engaged in the repatriation of captives.

Hamas does not hand over its detainees - living or deceased - directly to the Israel Defense Forces, but rather to the Red Cross, which in turn escorts them through the territory and hands them on to the IDF.

But the arrival of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza territory is a recent development.

After more than two years of heavy shelling by Israeli forces, the UN calculates that as much as eighty-four percent of the territory has been destroyed completely.

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

It is now working in coordination with the Egyptian authorities.

On Sunday, an official representative said that the organization was aware of where the bodies were.

"If the group put in greater work, they would be able to retrieve the bodies of our hostages," the spokesperson commented.

The former president shared on his social media account on Saturday that action would be taken if the remains of the deceased hostages were not returned quickly.

"A portion of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can hand over at present and, for some reason, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their disarming," he said.

Trump continued: "We will observe what they do over the coming two days. I am monitoring the situation with great attention."

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On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would determine which international troops it would allow as part of a proposed multinational contingent in the region to help maintain the truce under Trump's plan.

"We are in command of our security, and we have also stated explicitly regarding foreign troops that we will decide which units are unacceptable to us, and this is how we function and will proceed," he said speaking at the start of a cabinet meeting.

On the end of the week, the American diplomat said "a lot of nations" had offered to be part of the contingent - but noted Israel would have to be satisfied with those taking part.

This seemed like a allusion to Turkey, amid reports Israel had rejected the nation's involvement.

It remained unclear, however, how this contingent could be deployed without an agreement with the organization.

The Israeli military launched a armed operation in the territory in following the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others as captives.

No fewer than sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in military actions in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.