Barbara Plett Usher BBC correspondent Reporting from Jerusalem & Ian Aikman BBC News Reporting from London
(BBC) – Israel has retrieved the body of a Thai national taken hostage during the Hamas-led attack in October 2023, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz says.
He said the body of Nattapong Pinta was retrieved during a special operation in the Rafah area of southern Gaza on Friday. The 35-year-old was working as an agricultural labourer in southern Israel when he was kidnapped.
Mr Nattapong is likely to have been killed during his first months of captivity, an Israeli military official said. Before the operation, it was not known whether he was dead or alive.
It comes after the Israeli army recovered the bodies of two Israeli Americans in Gaza earlier this week.
Mr Nattapong was the married father of a young son, the military official said. He had been working at Kibbutz Nir Oz to support his family in Thailand when he was captured by a militant group called the Mujahideen Brigades.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that the mission to recover his body was launched following information from the interrogation of a “captured terrorist”.
After reports of his recovery on Saturday, the BBC tried to reach out to Mr Nattapong’s wife. She did not answer the call but texted back with a picture of her son crying.
