Body of Thai hostage retrieved from Gaza as Israeli air strikes kill 45
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in
Gaza
since Hamas's October 7th, 2023, attack on
Israel
, defence minister Israel Katz said on Saturday, as Israeli air strikes killed 45 people, said local medics.
Nattapong Pinta's body was held by a Palestinian militant group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Mr Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Mr Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating
war in Gaza
.
Israel's military said Mr Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were
retrieved earlier this week
.
READ MORE
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, which has previously denied killing its captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
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In pictures: Many in Gaza face malnutrition as blockade enters third month
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Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
Medics in Gaza said 45 people in total were killed in Israeli air strikes across the enclave on Saturday.
At least 15 Palestinians were killed and 50 wounded by air strikes in the Gaza City district of Sabra in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, local health authorities said.
More than one missile landed in the area. The target seemed to have been a multi-floor residential building, but the explosion damaged several other houses nearby, according to witnesses and media.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment. It later warned people to evacuate the nearby district of Jabalia, saying it was going to strike there after rockets were launched by militants in the vicinity.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Saturday that Gaza's hospitals only had fuel for three more days and that Israel was denying access for international relief agencies to areas where fuel storage designated for hospitals are located.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli military or COGAT, the Israeli defence agency that co-ordinates humanitarian matters with the Palestinians.
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza's 2.3 million population is
at risk of famine
after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US – and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
On Wednesday, the GHF suspended operations and asked the Israeli military to review security protocols after Palestinian hospital officials said more than 80 people had been shot dead and hundreds wounded near distribution points between June 1st-3rd.
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Gaza aid group halts distribution due to civilian safety concerns after dozens killed seeking aid
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The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided about nine million meals so far.
Israel is facing growing international pressure over its offensive against Hamas, which has plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis and displaced most of its population.
Hamas-led militants took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7th attack, Israel's single deadliest day.
Israel's military campaign has since killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza, and left much of the densely populated coastal enclave in ruins.
Families of remaining hostages fear that those alive are in danger from the continued Israeli offensive and those dead will be lost forever. Israel says the campaign is aimed at bringing them all back.
More than 40 hostages have been killed in captivity, some in the course of Israeli strikes and others killed by their captors. – Reuters
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Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
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Irish Times
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Written in stone: 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'. Carved into tablets for eternity: 'Thou Shalt Not Steal'. With the passage of time, it's apparent that writing into rock does not ensure an enduring message. These basic commandments are reflected in similar guidelines in my own Buddhist tradition; and they, too, often go ignored. Stealing and killing doesn't get any bigger than colonial expansion. Theft on a grand scale is the grabbing of Ukrainian territory by Russia. It is Israel 'seizing territory' and 'dividing up' Gaza. It is the US trying to take Greenland to rob it of its natural resources. When Donald Trump says 'Gaza is ours', he is acting like Sykes and Picot, the British and French colonial overloads who divided up the Middle East like a cake in 1916, fuelling the conflict and tragedy we are still living with today. READ MORE This colonialism is nothing short of stealing what does not belong to you. 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The hatred planted deep in the hearts of brutalised Ukrainians will echo for more than a century. A whole new generation of fighters will be created through this brutality. The lesson that security comes with the open hand of friendship and not the closed fist of violence seems to have gone unlearned. To achieve peace in our time, we need to see 'the other' as an equal human being. This was the great lesson of the Belfast Agreement. We need to stop feeding the endless cycle of violence, perpetrating the cycle with more violence. As the Buddha taught, 'Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law'. Even when international justice is corrupted, some laws are eternal and never change. Rev Myozan Ian Kilroy is a Zen Buddhist priest and abbot at the Dublin Zen Centre. His new book, Do Not Try to Become a Buddha, is out now from Wisdom Publications
