Israeli hostage found dead in Gaza

The Israeli military has recovered the body of an Israeli hostage from a building near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, as soldiers continued to search the hospital complex after Wednesday’s early morning raid.

- Emine Sinmaz

Yehudit Weiss, a 65-year-old woman, was abducted from the Be’eri kibbutz by Hamas militants during their attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 taken hostage. She had been undergoing cancer treatment.

“The body of Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted by the Hamas terrorist organisation, was extracted by IDF troops from a structure adjacent to the Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip and was transferred to Israeli territory,” a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said late on Thursday.

“In the structure in which Yehudit was located, military equipment including Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs were also found,” the spokesperson added.

Weiss’s husband, Shmulik, was killed during the Hamas attack.

The IDF also said it had uncovered a Hamas tunnel shaft and a vehicle with weapons at the Dar al-Shifa hospital complex.

“In the Shifa hospital, IDF troops found an operational tunnel shaft and a vehicle containing a large number of weapons,” the military said. It made public videos and photographs of the tunnel shaft and weapons, though no independent verification was possible.

Israel dropped leaflets into southern Gaza, telling Palestinian civilians to leave four towns on the eastern edge of Khan Younis, fuelling fears that its offensive would spread south.

People in Bani Shuhaila, Khuza’a, Abassan and al-Qarara were told that anyone in the vicinity of militants or their positions was “putting his life in danger”.

Israel’s army chief said forces were close to destroying what he described as the military system that existed in northern Gaza, a day after the IDF entered the Shifa hospital compound.