TEL AVIV, August 20. /TASS/. Israel will make every effort toward returning all hostages being held by radicals in the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian enclave, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

"The State of Israel will continue to make every effort to return all of our hostages - the living and the deceased," the Israeli premier’s office quoted Netanyahu as saying. "Overnight our forces returned the bodies of six of our hostages that had been held by the murderous Hamas terrorist organization: Avraham Munder, Alex Dancyg, Chaim Peri, Yagev Buchshtav, Yoram Metzger and Nadav Popplewell," the prime minister said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that the bodies of those six hostages who were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, and died in Hamas captivity had been retrieved in a joint operation with the Israel Security Agency (ISA) from the Khan Yunis area in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier on Tuesday, Dmitry Gendelman, advisor to the office of the Israeli prime minister, said as many as "109 Israeli citizens are still being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza."

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian movement Hamas staged a surprise attack on Israeli territory from Gaza, killing residents of Israeli border settlements and taking 250 hostages. In response, Israel launched a military operation in the Palestinian enclave to destroy Hamas’s military and political wings and free all hostages.