The Israeli military on Wednesday said that a February strike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza may have led Hamas militants to execute six hostages.

The bodies of those six male hostages were recovered in late August. Two days later, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that all of them had been shot, but it could not definitively say whether it was the cause of death. The slain hostages were Yoram Metzger,  Alexander Dancyg,  Avraham Munder, Chaim Peri, Nadav Popplewell, and Yagev Buchshtab.

“It is highly probable that their deaths were related to the strike near the location where they were held,” the military said in a Wednesday statement on the investigation.

Speaking at a press briefing about an investigation into the hostages’ deaths, an IDF official said the Israeli military struck “a terror target” on February 14 in Khan Younis, but did not know that hostages were being held nearby. “The investigation did not find anything wrong with this attack, in the planning process or the execution,” the official said.

After a forensic examination and other investigations, the military now believes that “the most plausible scenario” is that the hostages and their guards survived the initial effects of that strike but that the strike may have led militants to shoot the six hostages. The guards themselves subsequently died, the military official said, from “a secondary effect” of the strike, such a lack of oxygen in the tunnel where they were living.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari later raised the possibility of the aftermath of the strike killing the hostages. He said that while the most likely way the hostages died was at the hands of militants following the February attack, with the militants then dying from “secondary effects of the strike,” there were also other possible explanations.

“Another possibility is that the hostages were killed by secondary effects along with the terrorists and subsequently shot by other terrorists who arrived later,” he said, adding, “a less probable possibility is that the hostages were killed before the strike.”

Hagari said that due to the amount of time that passed from when the hostages were killed to when the forensic exams took place, “it is not possible to definitively determine whether the hostages were killed by gunfire or as a result of exposure to the aftermath of the strike.”

“Operational lessons from this incident have been incorporated to minimize risks to hostages in the future,” he said.

Munder, 79, Metzger, 80, and Peri, 80, were all residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Gaza border, where they were captured during Hamas’ October 7 attacks, according to statements from the kibbutz.

Popplewell, who was 51 when abducted, and Buchshtab, 35, were taken from Kibbutz Nirim, the kibbutz said in a statement.

Israeli soldiers on August 31 found the bodies of another six hostages, this time in Rafah. Hamas said that it had executed them because it believed Israeli soldiers may have been closing in.

Another hostage recovered

As the six hostages’ families were presented with the findings of the investigation surrounding their deaths, the military announced on Wednesday that it recovered the body of yet another hostage.

Israel recovered 38-year-old dual German-Israeli citizen Itay Svirsky’s body from Gaza, after he was killed by his captors, the Israeli military and security agency Shin Bet announced.

“In a special operation, the body of the abductee Itay Svirsky was recovered, who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, from Kibbutz Be’eri and murdered in captivity by Hamas terrorists in January 2024,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said, adding that the operation was carried out by Israel’s military and security agency.

“Our heart is torn by the heavy loss of the Svirsky family, who also lost Itay’s parents, Orit and the late Rafi, who were murdered in the murderous attack by Hamas,” it added.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Svirsky was laid to rest in Israel, and on behalf of his family, requested the public not to share images of him from the Hamas video that was distributed in January.

In January, Hamas released a video showing clips of three hostages – Noa Argamani, Svirsky and Yossi Sharabi – speaking to the camera, ending with a caption saying, “Tomorrow, we will inform you of their fate.” The next day, another video appeared to show the dead bodies of Svirsky and Sharabi. In the video, Argamani said both men had been killed by Israeli bombing.

This brings the number of hostages currently held – dead and alive – to 100, of which 96 were taken on October 7.