JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel recovered the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in Gaza where it said they were killed shortly before its troops reached them, triggering protests by Israelis on Sunday and planned labour strikes over the failure to save them.
Thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do more to bring the remaining hostages home from Gaza. Labour leaders urged workers to down tools on Monday.
The Israeli military announced the recovery of the bodies from underground in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, as a polio vaccination campaign began in the war-shattered Palestinian territory and violence flared in the occupied West Bank.
The bodies of Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino have been returned to Israel, military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters.
A forensic examination determined that they had been “murdered by Hamas terrorists in a number of shots at close range” 48-72 hours previously, an Israeli health ministry spokesperson said.
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 remaining hostages, said Israel would not rest until it caught those responsible.
“Whoever murders hostages – does not want a deal,” he said.
Senior Hamas officials said that Israel, in its refusal to sign a ceasefire agreement, was to blame for the deaths.
“Netanyahu is responsible for the killing of Israeli prisoners,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. “The Israelis should choose between Netanyahu and the deal.”
Amid public anger over the fate of the hostages, the head of Israel’s trades union federation, Arnon Bar-David, called for a general strike on Monday to pressure the government into signing a deal, and said Ben Gurion airport, Israel’s main air transport hub, would be closed from 8 a.m. (0500 GMT).
“A deal is more important than anything else,” he said. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who has clashed frequently with Netanyahu, also called for a deal and opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid urged people to join the demonstration in Tel Aviv.
In Jerusalem, protesters blocked roads and demonstrated outside the prime minister’s residence. Some lined roads, waving Israeli flags in honour of the six hostages. Aerial footage showed Tel Aviv’s main highway blocked with protesters holding flags with pictures of the slain hostages.
Municipal services in Tel Aviv and other sites across Israel planned a half-day strike on Monday in solidarity with hostages and their families.
About 250 hostages were captured during the Hamas-led shock incursion into southern Israel on Oct. 7 that sparked Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza.
The deaths of the six leave 101 Israeli and foreign captives still in Gaza, but Israel believes around a third of these have died, with the fate of others unknown.
The Hostage Families Forum called on Netanyahu to take responsibility and explain what was holding up an agreement.
“They were all murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, torture, and starvation in Hamas captivity. The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages,” it said.
Netanyahu’s office said he had spoken to the family of Alexander Lobanov, whose body was among those recovered, apologising and expressing “deep sorrow”.
But the family of another hostage, Carmel Gat, said they had refused to speak to Netanyahu, and instead called on Israelis to join the protests.
“Take to the streets and shut down the country until everyone returns. They can still be saved,” Gat’s cousin, Gil Dickmann, wrote on X.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he was “devastated and outraged” at the news of the death of 23-year-old Israeli American Goldberg-Polin and the other hostages.
“Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages,” he said in a statement.
Speaking to reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, earlier, he said he was “still optimistic” about a ceasefire deal.
Months of stop-start negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to secure a deal, despite increased U.S. pressure and repeated trips by top officials to the region.
The two sides agreed to pause fighting in areas of Gaza for at least eight hours daily from Sunday to Tuesday to allow the start of a complex operation to vaccinate 640,000 children against polio.
The campaign comes after the confirmation last month that a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
Israeli forces continued to battle Hamas-led militants in several parts of Gaza, with the Israeli military targeting what it said was a Hamas command centre in a former school in Gaza City. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said 11 people had died and medics said many others had been wounded.
In Khan Younis, an Israeli air strike killed two Palestinians and wounded 10 others, according to medics, bringing the day’s total death toll in Gaza to 27.
About 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas assault on Oct. 7, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, at least 40,738 Palestinians have been killed and 94,154 injured in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, the enclave’s health ministry says.
The war has fuelled tensions across the region and in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli officials said three Israeli police officers were 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”.
Palestinian armed factions said their fighters were confronting Israeli forces in the flashpoint West Bank city of Jenin with machine-guns and explosive devices.