Bodies of three Israeli hostages found amid fierce battle

The Israeli military said its troops in Gaza found the bodies of three Israeli hostages killed by Hamas during its October 7 attack, including German-Israeli Shani Louk.

A photo of 22-year-old Louk’s twisted body in the back of a truck ricocheted around the world and brought to light the scale of the militants’ attack on communities in southern Israel.

The military identified the other two bodies as those of a 28-year-old woman, Amit Buskila, and a 56-year-old man, Itzhak Gelerenter.

All three were killed by Hamas while fleeing an outdoor dance party near the Gaza border, where militants killed hundreds of people, military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said at a news conference.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deaths ‘‘heartbreaking’’, saying: ‘‘We will return all of our hostages, both the living and the dead.’’

The military said on Friday that the bodies were found overnight, without elaborating, and did not give details on where they were located. Israel has been operating in the Gaza Strip’s southern city of Rafah, where it says it has intelligence that hostages are being held.

Israeli forces battled Hamas fighters in the narrow alleyways of Jabalia in northern Gaza in some of the fiercest engagements since they returned to the area a week ago, while in the south militants attacked tanks massing around Rafah.

Residents said Israeli armour had thrust as far as the market at the heart of Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, and that bulldozers were demolishing homes and shops in the path of the advance.

‘‘Tanks and planes are wiping out residential districts and markets, shops, restaurants, everything. It is all happening before the one-eyed world,’’ Ayman Rajab, a resident of western Jabalia, said.

Israel had said its forces had cleared Jabalia months earlier in the Gaza war, triggered by the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, but said last week it was returning to prevent the Islamist group regrouping there.

At the southern end of Gaza, smoke rose over Rafah, where an escalating Israeli assault has sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from what was one of the only places of refuge left.

‘‘People are terrified, and they’re trying to get away,’’ Jens Laerke, the UN humanitarian office spokesperson, said in Geneva, adding that most were following orders to move north towards the coast but that there were no safe routes or destinations.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said troops had killed more than 60 militants in recent days and located a weapons warehouse close to a shelter complex in what it described as a ‘‘divisional-level offensive’’ in Jabalia.

A divisional operation would typically involve multiple brigades of thousands of troops each, making it one of the biggest of the war.

‘‘Even now, the soldiers are exchanging fire with terrorist cells in the area,’’ the IDF said. ‘‘The Seventh Brigade’s fire control centre directed dozens of airstrikes, eliminated terrorists and destroyed terrorist infrastructure.’’

Hamas-led militants killed about 1200 people and abducted about 250 others in the October 7 attack. About half of those hostages have since been freed, most in swaps for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Israel says about 100 hostages are still captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of about 30 more.