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Units from Egyptian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to locate the remains of deceased hostages captured during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have verified.

The authorities in Israel announced that the crews have been permitted to search beyond the so-called "demarcation line" in the area controlled by military personnel in Gaza.

Hamas has transferred 15 out of 28 hostages who lost their lives under the first phase of a American-mediated truce agreement, which requires it to hand over all remains of captives. The group said it is now coordinating with Egyptian authorities.

Donald Trump has cautions Hamas to start return the remains "promptly, or the other countries involved in this significant peace will take action".

An official representative said the crew from Egypt has been permitted to work with the ICRC to locate the remains, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the operation past the "yellow line".

The "demarcation line" indicates the border running along the north, south and eastern of the Gaza territory that Israel withdrew to, as part of the first stage of the ceasefire deal.

Until now, Israeli authorities has not approved the access of such teams.

Egypt, along with Qatar and Turkey, is a principal participant of the mediated by Trump Gaza peace plan, which was signed in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month.

The development will be welcomed by relatives, desperate to provide a proper burial.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has already been heavily involved in the return of hostages.

Hamas does not transfer its detainees - alive or deceased - straight to the IDF, but rather to the ICRC, which in turn accompanies them through the territory and transfers them to the Israeli military.

But the arrival of digging crews from Egypt inside the Gaza Strip is a recent development.

After more than two years of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, the United Nations estimates that as much as 84% of the area has been destroyed completely.

The group claims it is doing its best to retrieve remains of captives, but it faces difficulty finding them under debris of buildings bombed out by the IDF in the region.

It is now working in coordination with the Egyptian authorities.

On the weekend, an Israeli government spokesperson said that the organization knew where the bodies were.

"If Hamas put in greater work, they would be able to recover the remains of our hostages," the representative commented.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on the weekend that action would be taken if the bodies of the deceased hostages were not handed back quickly.

"A portion of the remains are hard to reach, but the rest they can hand over at present and, for some reason, they are not. Maybe it has do with their disarming," he said.

He added: "We will observe what they accomplish over the coming two days. I am monitoring the situation very closely."

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On Sunday, the Israeli leader announced the country would decide which foreign forces it would allow as part of a planned multinational contingent in Gaza to help maintain the truce under Trump's plan.

"We are in command of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding foreign troops that we will determine which forces are not acceptable to us, and this is how we function and will continue to operate," he declared speaking at the beginning of a cabinet meeting.

On the end of the week, the American diplomat indicated "a lot of nations" had volunteered to be involved in the contingent - but noted Israeli authorities would have to be comfortable with participants.

This appeared to be a reference to Turkey, amid reports Israeli officials had vetoed the country's involvement.

It remained unclear, however, how this contingent could be deployed without an agreement with the organization.

The Israeli military launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about twelve hundred people and took two hundred fifty-one additional persons as captives.

At least sixty-eight thousand five hundred nineteen have been lost their lives in Israeli attacks in the region from that time, according to the area's health authorities under the group's control.