Former Israeli hostage Eitan Horn embraces family and friends after returning home Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, following his release under the ceasefire deal with Hamas. (Stoyan Nenov/Reuters)
An advisor tamped down accusations that Hamas had violated the ceasefire agreements, insisting the terms of the agreement prioritized living hostages, and they expected bodies to be difficult to locate in a war zone.
Still, they added, "I can tell you that we're not going to leave here until everybody comes home."
"We've heard a lot of people saying well, you know, Hamas violated the deal, because not all the bodies have been returned. I think the understanding we had with them was we'd get all the live hostages, out, which they did honor that."
EXCLUSIVE: ISRAELI AMBASSADOR SAYS NO PEACE IN GAZA UNLESS HAMAS HANDS OVER ALL 48 HOSTAGES, DISARMS
Israeli intelligence and Turkish retrieval experts, trained for Turkey’s frequent earthquakes, will aid the effort to locate the 19 remaining bodies.
"You have to understand the complexity of the conditions on the ground," an advisor said. "The entire Gaza Strip has been pulverized. It looks like something out of a movie. And there's very, very little buildings left standing."
The advisor equated the debris levels to those seen after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. "This is, I don't know, it feels like multiple times more."
Amid the debris are unexploded ordnance, further complicating body retrieval.
An advisor also detailed plans for "safe zones" behind the Yellow Line — the area still occupied by the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza — for Palestinians looking to flee Hamas as the militant group conducts executions across the strip.
Palestinian resident Hayam Meqdad, 49, walks over debris of her destroyed home in Gaza City on Oct. 15, 2025, a day after the ceasefire took effect. (Ebrahim Hajjaj/Reuters)
"We are seeing different actions on all sides that, obviously, that President Trump and his team are working very hard to minimize."
An Israeli military official told Fox News Digital the killings are "Hamas’s deliberate attempt to show the killing publicly and reestablish its rule by terrorizing civilians."
Trump earlier this week suggested Hamas was conducting police activities and those who were killed were gang members.
"[Hamas] do want to stop the problems and they've been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time," he told reporters on Monday.
"You have close to 2 million people going back to buildings that have been demolished, and a lot of bad things can happen. So we want it to be — we want it to be safe."
The president added on Tuesday: "They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad gangs, very, very bad."
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"And that didn't bother me much, to be honest with you," he added.
On Monday, Hamas returned all living hostages, showing a positive sign for the historic but tenuous ceasefire agreement with Israel. The IDF, in turn, pulled back in Gaza to behind what’s known as a "Yellow line," part of Phase One of the agreement.
Fox News' Efrat Lachter contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-considers-cash-rewards-gazans-aiding-search-slain-hostages