Trump says hundreds of bodies were uncovered in search for Gaza hostages

WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that for each body of a deceased hostage recovered from the besieged Gaza Strip, up to a hundred other corpses were discovered in the decimated ruins of the Palestinian territory

"Believe it or not, Hamas worked along with Israel, and they dug and they dug and they dug. It's a tough thing to do, going through, bodies all over, passing up 100 bodies, sometimes, for each one that they found," Trump said during his annual State of the Union address.

"They found all 28. Nobody thought that was possible, but we did it," he added, referring to the bodies of the hostages that were eventually returned to Israel.

Trump further sought to downplay the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza that have persisted despite a ceasefire he helped to broker in October.

"Of course, the war in Gaza, which proceeds at a very low level, it's just about there. And I want to thank Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for your help," he said.

Witkoff and Kushner have led the president's diplomatic efforts in Gaza and beyond.

Israel launched a relentless offensive on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 8, 2023, killing more than 72,000 people, mostly women and children, and injuring over 171,000 others. The war followed a Hamas-led cross-border raid on Israel the day prior that killed roughly 1,200 people.