Body of hostage, Yehudit Weiss, found near hospital, says Israel

Yehudit Weiss’s body was found in a building near the al-Shifa hospital complex, where Israeli soldiers have been searching for evidence of a Hamas command centre

The body of Yehudit Weiss, an Israeli woman who was abducted from her Gaza border community on October 7, 'was extracted by IDF (army) troops from a structure adjacent to Al-Shifa hospital', an army statement said.

The body of a hostage has been ­recovered from Gaza City, according to the Israeli military.

Yehudit Weiss’s remains were found in a building near the ­­­al-Shifa hospital, where ­Israeli soldiers have been searching “one floor at a time” for evidence of a Hamas command centre.

Weapons were discovered in the building where the body was found, according to the Israel ­Defence Forces, which added that it believed Ms Weiss’s kidnappers had escaped before the soldiers arrived.

It is not clear how Ms Weiss died. If confirmed, hers would be the first recovered body of a hostage taken by Hamas and its allies in the October 7 attack on Israelis along the Gazan border.

“Yehudit was murdered by the terrorists in the Gaza Strip and we didn’t manage to reach her in time,” spokesman Daniel Hagari told a televised briefing.

The 65-year-old was kidnapped from her home in the border kibbutz community of Beeri, one of the areas worst hit by the brutal Hamas assault. Her husband was killed in the attack, a hostage support group said, but the four of her five children at the kibbutz at the time survived.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleged hostages may even have been held at the hospital. “We had strong indications that they were held in the Shifa Hospital, which is one of the reasons we entered the hospital,” he told America’s CBS.

“If they were [there], they were taken out.”

Israel has previously said there were 239 known hostages, after the release of two elderly women. Hamas has said it does not hold all the hostages and claims that a number have been killed in the ­Israeli bombardment.

Israel confirmed the death in captivity of Noa Marciano, 19, a soldier who was seen in a Hamas video made four days after her kidnapping, before subsequent images showed her bloodied and dead from what the group claimed was an Israeli airstrike.

Groups representing the families of hostages have been pressuring Mr Netanyahu to do more to secure their release. He has said that freeing them is his priority.

There has been little news on the fate of the hostages, Israelis and foreigners, some of them just infants, despite ongoing negotiations for the release of some in ­exchange for a pause in fighting. Qatar, where Hamas has political offices, and Egypt have been mediating negotiations, which Egypt’s foreign minister described on Thursday night as “very delicate”.

“We are hopeful that our efforts and the efforts of others will bring about the speedy release,” Sameh Shoukry said.

The discovery of Ms Weiss’s’ remains came as the mother of Shani Louk, the Israeli-German festival-goer who was killed by Hamas on October 7, claimed that the man who paraded her body naked around the Gaza Strip has been killed. Ricarda Louk said in an interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, broadcast on Facebook, that “by chance” she knew that the man believed to be her captor, who was seen sitting in the back of a pickup truck with the 22-year-old’s body, is “not alive anymore”.

Ms Louk did not say how she knew that he had been killed nor give any details on how or when she believed that it had happened. The IDF did not immediately ­respond when asked for confirmation of his death. “It did not give me relief,” she said.

For the first two weeks of the war the family had been led to ­believe that Louk was held captive by Hamas in Gaza. Two weeks ago the Israeli army, accompanied by a rabbi, knocked on their door at night to say that a piece of her skull had been found in Israel that “no human could live without”.

“She was a very happy, lively person,” her mother said.

“She liked music, and dancing and living, and she was really ­enjoying it until the last moment.  “This is your own daughter being treated like a trophy on a truck,” she recalled of seeing the video for the first time of her daughter’s body being paraded in Gaza. “It’s the worst you can think of that can happen to a family member. You can’t understand it.”

Without the body, Ms Louk said they had been unable to hold a proper funeral. “We decided to wait,” she told Shmuley, who was a rabbi at Oxford University in 1988.

“When the hostage situation is over maybe the body will come back, and then we can bury her and do a funeral. If not we will create a memorial place without the body, we will have a place to mourn in any case.”

Agencies