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

The authorities in Israel announced that the crews have been permitted to search beyond the referred to as "yellow line" in the area controlled by military personnel in Gaza.

The group has handed over fifteen out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the initial stage of a US-brokered truce agreement, which requires it to hand over all remains of captives. The group stated it is now working together with officials in Egypt.

The former US president has warned Hamas to begin returning the bodies "quickly, or the additional nations involved in this great peace will intervene".

An Israeli spokesperson said the crew from Egypt has been permitted to collaborate with the ICRC to find the bodies, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the operation past the "demarcation line".

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

Until now, Israel has not authorized the access of these crews.

Egypt, along with Qatari officials and Turkish authorities, is a key signatory of the Trump-brokered Gaza peace plan, which was ratified in the Egyptian resort of the resort town earlier this month.

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

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

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

But the entry 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 estimates that as much as eighty-four percent of the area has been reduced to rubble.

Hamas claims it is doing its best to recover remains of captives, but it faces difficulty finding them under rubble of buildings destroyed by the IDF in Gaza.

It is now working in coordination with the officials in Egypt.

On Sunday, an Israeli government spokesperson said that Hamas knew where the bodies were.

"If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the bodies of our hostages," the spokesperson said.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that measures would be implemented if the remains of the deceased hostages were not returned promptly.

"A portion of the remains are hard to reach, but others they can hand over at present and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Maybe it has do with their disarming," he remarked.

Trump continued: "Let's see what they accomplish over the coming two days. I am watching this very closely."

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On the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel would decide which international troops it would permit as part of a proposed international force in Gaza to help maintain the ceasefire 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 not acceptable to us, and this is how we function and will proceed," he said speaking at the start of a government session.

On Friday, the American diplomat indicated "numerous nations" had offered to be part of the contingent - but noted Israeli authorities would have to be comfortable with participants.

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

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

The Israeli military initiated a armed operation in Gaza in following the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about 1,200 individuals and captured 251 additional persons as captives.

No fewer than sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in military actions in the region since then, according to the territory's health authorities under the group's control.