The body of Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted by Hamas on October 7, was recovered by the Israel Defense Forces from a building near Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, the military said Thursday.
The IDF said troops from the 7th Armored Brigade’s 603rd Battalion found her body, along with military equipment, including assault rifles and RPGs, belonging to the Hamas terrorists who had held her captive.
“To our sorrow, Yehudit was murdered by the terrorists in the Gaza Strip. And we didn’t get to her in time,” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in his daily press briefing on Thursday evening. He did not specify when she was killed.
Her body was brought into Israel for identification, following which the military and police notified Weiss’s family of her death.
During the briefing, Hagari dodged a reporter’s question on claims that the IDF took several bodies from Shifa Hospital during operations Thursday.
Weiss, a mother of five, was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, when thousands of Hamas terrorists streamed into Israel, murdering at least 1,200 people and taking some 240 hostages. Her husband, Shmulik, was found murdered in the safe room of their home a week and a half after the attack.
Weiss, a retiree who worked with kindergarten children and in the kibbutz dining room, was being treated with radiation for breast cancer when she was kidnapped.
Sending its “heartfelt condolences to the family,” the IDF stressed in a statement that “the national mission… is to locate the missing and return the hostages home.”
“The IDF is operating alongside and in full coordination with the relevant national and security institutions in order to pursue these tasks. We will not cease from the mission until it will be completed,” the statement said.
Weiss is the second abductee known to have died in captivity in the last week, after the IDF confirmed the death of 19-year-old Noa Marciano on November 14.
In an interview with Channel 12 after they were told of her death, Weiss’s family members appealed to officials to bring home the rest of the captives being held by terror groups in Gaza.
“It’s important for us to say that we fought, we battled in every possible way to bring mom, grandma Yehudit home,” her daughter Zemer said. “For us, it is too late, but it is important for us to support all the families of the hostages, and to tell the world, bring them home now, so that for them it is not too late, like it was for us.”
Her son Ohad added that they had “hope, a lot of hope, that she would come home. We wished, we hoped, and sadly for us, it is too late, but maybe for the other families it isn’t.
“We wish for the return of everyone, all of them, children, soldiers and adults. We love them all and fear for them all,” he added.
Her children said that they only just completed the 30-day mourning period for their father when they received the news about their mother’s death.
Earlier, family members of those missing and held captive in Gaza walked alongside hundreds of Israelis on the third day of a march from Tel Aviv to the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, which they plan to reach on Saturday afternoon.
The families reached Modiin, where they paid a condolence call to the Marciano family, which is in mourning following the loss of their daughter Noa.
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