The Israeli army said on Tuesday it had concluded that military operations in southern Gaza likely led to the killing by Hamas of six hostages in August.
As the fighting churns on, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said that an Israeli delegation returned from a “significant” round of talks in Qatar aiming to secure a truce and the release of dozens of hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.
In late August, after troops found the six hostages’ bodies in an underground shaft in Rafah, the military said they were killed just before soldiers reached them.
Netanyahu said at the time that the six – Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino – were “executed” with a bullet “to the head”.
The military probe into their deaths found that Israeli “ground activities in the area, although gradual and cautious, had a circumstantial influence on the terrorists’ decision to murder the six hostages”, the army said in a statement on Tuesday.
It said that “based on the investigation, the hostages were murdered by gunfire from Hamas terrorists” while Israeli forces were operating in the Tel al-Sultan area.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group responded to the army’s statement by calling for action to bring back all remaining hostages.