A funeral was held in Israel on Friday for Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier who was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 and whose body was found this week by Israeli forces near the Al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza was found said. According to the IDF, the body of another hostage, 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss, was found near Al-Shifa on Thursday.
“The national task before our eyes is to locate the missing and return the abducted persons home,” the IDF said in a statement on Friday. “We will not stop the mission until it is complete.”
The IDF said targeted reconnaissance allowed it to pinpoint the exact location of Marciano’s body.
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The IDF has claimed that Al-Shifa, home to Gaza’s largest hospital, sits above a main Hamas command center. The US has said it also has intelligence supporting Israel’s claims.
Israel released photos and video clips on Thursday showing what it described as Hamas’s “terror infrastructure” at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, including an “operational tunnel shaft,” weapons and ammunition.
Israel has indicated it may expand its operations further south in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the north after being told to evacuate for safety reasons. The Associated Press reported that Israel dropped leaflets on Thursday in areas near the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis urging civilians to evacuate.
The IDF did not respond to CBS News’ request for comment about the leaflets or its operations in southern Gaza.
The Israeli military called for civilians in southern Gaza to be relocated to a “safe zone” near the coast, but the heads of 18 UN agencies and aid groups rejected that proposal on Thursday, saying it was too dangerous. to concentrate the civilian population in one area during the ongoing war, the AP reported.
On Friday, the Tanzanian government confirmed that a 22-year-old agricultural intern, believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas militants in Israel on October 7, was found dead. Details of how Clemence Felix Mtenga died or where or how his body was found have not been released by the Tanzanian or Israeli governments. Mtenga was one of 260 Tanzanians who studied agriculture in Israel as part of an agreement between the two countries.
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