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The families of six hostages found dead in Gaza have blamed their deaths on the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not negotiating a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said early on Sunday that the remains of the hostages were recovered from a tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where they were apparently killed not long before troops could reach them.
The bodies of Carmel Gat, 40, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Alexander Lobanov, 33, Almog Sarusi, 27, and Ori Danino, 25, have been returned to Israel, military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said. All six were captured by Hamas during the 7 October attack that ignited the Gaza war.
The discovery sparked calls for mass protests by families of the captives who said their loved ones could have been returned alive in a ceasefire deal.
Calling on the Mr Netanyahu to take responsibility and explain what was holding up an agreement, the Hostage Families Forum, said: “The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages.”
Thousands of people, some of them weeping, gathered outside Mr Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem.
In Tel Aviv, the relatives of hostages marched with coffins to symbolise the toll.
“We really think that the government is making these decisions for its own conservation and not for the lives of the hostages, and we need to tell them, ‘Stop!”’ said Shlomit Hacohen, a Tel Aviv resident.
Three of the six hostages found dead – including Israeli-American Goldberg-Polin, Yerushalmi and Gat – were reportedly scheduled to be released in the first phase of a ceasefire proposal discussed in July, and this only added to the sense of fury and frustration among the protesters.
“Nothing is worse than knowing that they could have been saved,” said Dana Loutaly. “Sometimes it takes something so awful to shake people up and get them out into the streets.”
US president Joe Biden spoke with Goldberg-Polin’s parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, who appeared at the Democratic National Convention last month, to offer condolences, a White House official said.
Prime minister Keir Starmer said he was “completely shocked” by the deaths.
The head of Israel’s biggest labour union called for a general strike on Monday to pressure Mr Netanyahu’s government to bring back Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.
The call for a one-day general strike by Arnon Bar-David, whose Histadrut union represents hundreds of thousands of workers, was backed by Israel’s main manufacturers and entrepreneurs in the high-tech sector.
The alliance of some of the most powerful voices in Israel’s economy reflected the scale of public anger over the deaths of the six hostages, who were among some 250 people seized by Hamas militants on 7 October last year.
“We must reach a deal [on the return of the surviving hostages]. A deal is more important than anything else,” Mr Bar-David told a press conference. “We are getting body bags instead of a deal.”
Mr Netanyahu, who faces growing calls to end nearly 11 months of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza with a deal that includes a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages, said Israel would not rest until it caught those responsible.
“Whoever murders hostages – does not want a deal,” he said.
The deaths of the six leaves 101 Israeli and foreign captives still in Gaza, but around a third of these are known to have died, with the fate of the others unknown.
The war has created a major humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as well as fuelling tensions across the region and in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli officials said on Sunday that three Israeli police officers had been killed when their vehicle came under fire near the city of Hebron.
Hundreds of Israeli troops have been carrying out raids across the West Bank since Wednesday in one of their largest actions in the area in months, which Israel says is aimed at rooting out Islamist militants.
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a hardline member of Israel’s security cabinet, called for tougher action against Palestinian militants in comments from the scene of the attack.
Hamas praised the attack, but did not claim responsibility for it, saying it was a “natural response to the massacres and genocide in the Gaza Strip”.
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