The remains of the last hostage, a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, have been recovered in Gaza, the IDF announced Monday on X.
"Following the completion of the identification process by the National Center of Forensic Medicine in collaboration with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, IDF representatives informed the family of the abducted," the IDF wrote in Hebrew with an X translation. The military said the remains of Ran Gvili had been identified and laid to rest.
The military said Ran Gvili, a 24-year-old Yamam commando, was killed in battle on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, and his body was taken to Gaza.
"The IDF shares the family's grief. The IDF will continue to accompany the families and the returned hostages and to act to strengthen the security of Israel's citizens.
"With this, all the abductees from the Gaza Strip area have been returned."
Israel said Sunday its military was conducting a "large-scale operation" to locate the last hostage in Gaza, as Washington and other mediators pressure Israel and Hamas to move into the next phase of their ceasefire.
The statement came as Israel's Cabinet met to discuss the possibility of opening Gaza's key Rafah border crossing with Egypt, and a day after top U.S. envoys met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about next steps.
The return of the remaining hostage has been widely seen as clearing the final obstacle to opening the Rafah crossing, a move that would signal the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
Late Sunday, Netanyahu's office in a statement said that once this search operation is "exhausted and in accordance with the agreement with the United States, Israel will open the Rafah crossing."
The return of all remaining hostages, alive or dead, has been a central part of the first phase of the ceasefire that took effect Oct. 10. Before Sunday, the previous hostage was recovered in early December.
Gvili's family had urged Netanyahu's government not to enter the ceasefire's second phase until his remains are returned.
But pressure has been building, and the Trump administration has already declared in recent days that the second phase is underway.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of dragging its feet in the recovery of the final hostage. Hamas in a statement Sunday said it had provided all the information it had about Gvili's remains, and accused Israel of obstructing efforts to search for them in areas of Gaza under Israeli military control.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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