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Teams from Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to locate the bodies of hostages who perished captured during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have confirmed.

The authorities in Israel announced that the crews have been permitted to operate past the so-called "demarcation line" in the region under the control of military personnel in the Gaza territory.

Hamas has handed over 15 out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal, which mandates it to transfer all hostage bodies. The organization said it is now coordinating with Egyptian authorities.

Donald Trump has warned the organization to begin returning the remains "quickly, or the additional nations involved in this significant peace will take action".

An official representative indicated the crew from Egypt has been permitted to work with the ICRC to locate the bodies, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the search past the "yellow line".

The "demarcation line" marks the border running along the north, southern and eastern of Gaza that Israel withdrew to, as part of the first stage of the ceasefire deal.

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

The Egyptian government, along with Qatari officials and Turkish authorities, is a principal participant of the mediated by Trump peace initiative for Gaza, which was signed in the Egyptian resort of the resort town in recent weeks.

The news will be greeted positively by relatives, desperate to provide a dignified funeral.

The ICRC has already been heavily involved in the repatriation of hostages.

Hamas does not hand over its detainees - alive or deceased - directly to the IDF, but rather to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through Gaza and transfers them to the Israeli military.

But the arrival of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza territory is new.

After more than 24 months of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the United Nations calculates that as much as 84% of the area has been reduced to rubble.

Hamas says it is making every effort to recover hostage bodies, but it faces difficulty finding them under debris of structures bombed out by the IDF in Gaza.

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

On the weekend, an official representative said that Hamas knew where the remains were.

"If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the remains of our captives," the spokesperson said.

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

"Some of the remains are difficult to access, but the rest they can hand over now and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Perhaps it has to do with their demilitarization," he said.

He added: "We will observe what they do over the next 48 hours. I am watching this very closely."

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On Sunday, the Israeli leader announced the country would determine which international troops it would allow as part of a proposed international force in the region to help secure the truce under Trump's plan.

"We are in command of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding foreign troops that we will determine which forces are not acceptable to us, and this is how we function and will proceed," he said talking at the beginning of a government session.

On the end of the week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated "numerous countries" had volunteered to be involved in the contingent - but noted Israeli authorities would have to be satisfied with participants.

This appeared to be a allusion to the Turkish government, amid accounts Israeli officials had rejected the nation's participation.

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

Israel launched a armed operation in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen took the lives of about 1,200 individuals and took 251 additional persons as captives.

At least sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health authorities under the group's control.