Israel strikes Gaza as military recovers five captive bodies

Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Thursday as the military said it had recovered the bodies of five Israelis taken to Gaza by Hamas militants after they were killed on October 7.

A group supporting Israeli hostages still held in the Palestinian territory welcomed the return of the bodies but alleged "sabotage" of diplomatic efforts to secure the release of others still in captivity.

The accusation from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum came hours before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met US President Joe Biden, who has been pushing a ceasefire and hostage release plan, in Washington.

Before the meeting, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Biden would tell Netanyahu a ceasefire deal is needed "soon".

In a speech to the US Congress on Wednesday, Netanyahu downplayed Palestinian civilian casualties during the more than nine months of war between Israel and Hamas and again vowed to destroy the Islamist group and bring home the hostages.

The Hamas attack that started the war on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The latest toll includes 30 deaths over the previous 24 hours.

Palestinian medical services said their teams had recovered four dead and 12 wounded after a strike near Gaza City on Thursday.

- 'Crisis of trust' -

Witnesses said there was shelling in the Khan Yunis and Rafah areas of the south, as well as air strikes in Al-Qarara.

The Israeli military said in recent days it had "eliminated dozens" of militants in Khan Yunis, where Hamas's armed wing also said it had been fighting.

The army said the five bodies recovered from Gaza had been returned to Israel following an operation in Khan Yunis on Wednesday.

Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the dead Israelis had been held by Hamas in tunnels 20 metres (65 feet) beneath the streets of Khan Yunis.

It was "underneath an area that was previously designated as a humanitarian area by the IDF (Israeli military)", Rear Admiral Hagari said, accusing Hamas of exploiting it "to hold our hostages captive".

The military had already told the families of the five that it believed their loved ones were dead.

Both the military and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said militants had taken their bodies to Gaza after killing them in the October 7 attack.

On Thursday, the forum demanded an urgent meeting with Israel's negotiating team for planned US-backed truce talks, saying a "crisis of trust" had emerged.

"It has now become apparent that the information provided to the hostages' families did not accurately reflect the situation's reality," the group said in a statement.

"This foot-dragging is a deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back. It effectively undermines the negotiations and indicates a serious moral failure."

Far-right members of Netanyahu's ruling coalition oppose any truce.

After Netanyahu's speech to Congress, Hamas issued a statement saying the Israeli premier "thwarted all efforts aimed at ending the war and concluding a deal to release the prisoners."

- 'Final gaps' -

A senior US administration official said negotiations for a Gaza deal were in the last stretch and Biden would try to close some "final gaps" in his talks  with Netanyahu.

But a source with knowledge of the negotiations said the arrival of Israeli negotiators in Qatar for further talks on a deal had been postponed from Thursday to next week.

Washington has been increasingly alarmed by the human toll of the Gaza war, but in his speech to Congress Netanyahu dismissed "all the lies" about civilian deaths.

He said "the war in Gaza has one of the lowest ratios of combatants to non-combatant casualties in the history of urban warfare".

AFP correspondents in Gaza have daily witnessed children and women brought into hospitals wounded or dead.

In May, the United Nations said women and children made up at least 56 percent of those killed during the war, based on a breakdown provided by Gaza's health ministry.

Speaking on Thursday, UN chief Antonio Guterres, in post since 2017, said that Israel's campaign in Gaza had "the highest level of killing and destruction that I remember... since I am secretary-general, anywhere in the world".