Contradicting Israel, White House says it will take time for Hamas to locate remaining bodies of hostages

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says, “It’s going to take some time and some special equipment” to retrieve the remaining 19 bodies of deceased hostages from Gaza to Israel.

The comment to reporters outside the White House appears to be the first time that the Trump administration has gone on the record to clarify that the body retrieval process won’t be immediate after a pair of top advisers to US President Donald Trump held a briefing yesterday on condition of anonymity during which they asserted that Hamas is not in violation of the ceasefire deal and that the terror group is doing all it can to retrieve the hostages’ bodies to date, given that many of them are buried deep under rubble.

Israel has pushed back on the notion and argues that Hamas is slow-walking the process and could produce at least a dozen or so more bodies than it has.

Leavitt declines to give a timeline for how long the US will give Hamas to retrieve the remaining bodies.

“The administration is fully committed to helping all sides get that done. It was part of the deal, and we’re going to see it through,” she says.