Hostages Forum: Bullet wounds found on recovered hostages’ bodies are ‘further proof of cruelty of terrorists’

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum says that signs of bullet wounds found in autopsies on the bodies of hostages recovered by the IDF from southern Gaza earlier this week are “further proof of the cruelty of the terrorists who have been holding 109 hostages for 321 days.”

In a statement, the Hostages Forum calls on the government to immediately close a deal with the Hamas terror group to free the remaining hostages kidnapped on October 7.

“Every minute that the deal is not yet completed, another hostage could die, and after 10 and a half months of war during which the hostages are suffering and dying, we all know that the return of all of the hostages will only be possible through a deal.”

The statement adds that the extraction of the bodies of Alex Dancyg, 75, Yagev Buchshtav, 35, Chaim Peri, 79, Yoram Metzger, 80, Nadav Popplewell, 51, and Avraham Munder, 78 earlier this week is “not a picture of victory, it is a picture of the complete failure of the country’s leadership, with six hostages who were supposed to come home alive returning in coffins.”

A short while ago the IDF confirmed that the bodies of the six hostages all had signs of gunshot wounds, according to initial autopsy findings.

All six are known to have been taken to Gaza alive during the Hamas-led invasion and slaughter in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and were killed over the course of the 10-month-long war.