The Israeli military announced tonight that two Thais, farm workers in a kibbutz attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023, were killed during this operation and their bodies were transferred to the Gaza Strip.

“We have informed the families of the two Thai abductees, farm laborers in Kibbutz Beeri, that they were killed in the October 7 terrorist attack and their bodies are in the hands of Hamas,” said the spokesman of the army, Daniel Hagari, in a press conference he granted.

Israeli army attacks have been intensifying in recent days in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Until now, Israeli troops and tanks had made only a limited incursion into eastern Rafah while on May 7 they captured the town’s border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, a vital entry point for aid. The crossing remains closed with hundreds of trucks carrying aid piling up in Egypt.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the city in recent days, many of them displaced for the umpteenth time during the war, UN officials say.