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Units from Egyptian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been granted permission to locate the bodies of hostages who perished taken during the 7 October attacks, officials in Israel have confirmed.

The Israeli government announced that the crews have been permitted to operate beyond the referred to as "yellow line" in the area under the control of Israeli forces in Gaza.

The group has transferred 15 out of twenty-eight deceased Israeli hostages under the initial stage of a American-mediated truce agreement, which mandates it to hand over all hostage bodies. The organization stated it is now working together with officials in Egypt.

The former US president has warned Hamas to start return the bodies "promptly, or the additional nations participating in this great peace will take action".

An official representative said the Egyptian team has been authorized to work with the Red Cross to locate the remains, and would use excavator machines and trucks for the search past the "demarcation line".

The "yellow line" indicates the border running along the northern, southern and east of Gaza that Israel withdrew to, as part of the first stage of the ceasefire deal.

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

The Egyptian government, along with Qatar and Turkish authorities, is a key signatory of the mediated by Trump peace initiative for Gaza, which was ratified in the coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh in recent weeks.

The news will be greeted positively by family members, desperate to give them a dignified funeral.

The ICRC has already been deeply engaged in the repatriation of captives.

Hamas does not transfer its captives - living or deceased - directly to the IDF, but instead to the ICRC, which in turn escorts them through the territory and transfers them to the Israeli military.

But the arrival of Egyptian excavation teams inside the Gaza Strip is new.

After more than two years of intense bombardment by Israel, the United Nations estimates that as much as eighty-four percent of the area has been reduced to rubble.

The group says it is doing its best to recover remains of captives, but it faces difficulty locating them under rubble of structures destroyed by the Israeli military in the region.

It is now coordinating with the officials in Egypt.

On Sunday, an Israeli government spokesperson stated that the organization was aware of where the remains were.

"If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the remains of our hostages," the representative commented.

Trump posted on his social media account on the weekend that action would be taken if the bodies of the hostages who died were not handed back quickly.

"A portion of the bodies are difficult to access, but others they can return at present and, for unknown reasons, they are not. Perhaps it has do with their disarming," he said.

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

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On Sunday, the Israeli leader announced the country would determine which foreign forces it would permit as part of a proposed international force in the region to help maintain the ceasefire under Trump's plan.

"We are in control of our safety, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we function and will proceed," he declared speaking at the beginning of a government session.

On Friday, the American diplomat said "numerous nations" had offered to be part of the contingent - but noted Israel would have to be comfortable with participants.

This seemed like a allusion to Turkey, amid accounts Israel had vetoed the country's involvement.

It was still uncertain, however, how such a force could be stationed without an agreement with Hamas.

Israel launched a armed operation in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 individuals and captured two hundred fifty-one others as captives.

No fewer than 68,519 have been killed in Israeli attacks in the region since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.