Military representatives on Sunday morning notified the families of slain hostages Ronen Engel, 54, and Thai national Sonthaya Oakkharasri, 30, that their bodies had been returned to Israel by Hamas the night prior and identified by forensic experts. With their return, the bodies of 16 slain hostages are still held in Gaza.
On October 7, 2023, Engel was killed by Hamas in Kibbutz Nir Oz and his remains were taken captive, while his wife, Karina, and their daughters, Mika and Yuval, were abducted alive. The following month, his wife and children were freed from Gaza under a ceasefire deal.
Oakkharasri, an agricultural worker, was murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri on the morning of October 7, and his body was abducted to Gaza, according to the IDF. His death was officially confirmed by the military in May 2024.
Caskets with Engel’s and Oakkharasri’s remains were collected by the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday night and then transferred to the Israel Defense Forces.
The caskets were inspected by the army, then draped in Israeli flags and honored in a brief ceremony led by a military rabbi before being taken to the Abu Kabir forensic institute in Tel Aviv, where forensic experts worked to identify the remains and determine the cause of death.
The IDF said it “shares in the families’ grief, continues to invest all efforts in bringing back the fallen hostages, and is preparing for the continued implementation of the agreement.”
A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said Israel is “determined, committed, and working tirelessly” to bring back all of the slain hostages for burial, adding that Hamas is “required to fulfill its commitments to the mediators and return them as part of the implementation of the agreement.”
After Engel’s body was identified, Mika Engel wrote on Instagram that her father was “finally home.”
“It’s not what we hoped, it’s not what we wished for him, but it’s finally here,” she added. “Our hearts are with the families of the hostages, and we won’t stop until the final slain hostage” is returned home.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Sunday it “embraces the Engel family,” calling the return “a form of relief for a family living in agonizing uncertainty and doubt for over two years.”
In a separate statement after Oakkharasri was identified, the forum said the hostage’s return “brings some measure of solace to a family that has lived in unbearable uncertainty and doubt for over two years.”
Ronen Engel, a photographer and dad who was ‘always smiling’
In addition to his wife and two daughters, Ronen is survived by his son, Tom, who was not home the weekend of October 7, 2023, and his brother, Dani.
Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Engel moved with his family to Nir Oz in 2010.
He was a photographer, a volunteer medic for the Magen David Adom ambulance service, a motorcyclist who enjoyed exploring nature, and an artist who used discarded scrap iron as his raw material.
“He was a professional photojournalist for Haaretz and Israel Hayom, and photographed almost every event and social activity in Nir Oz,” Kibbutz Nir Oz said in a statement after his murder was announced in December 2023. “Even when he was restoring furniture in the kibbutz, it was possible to see how artistic he was, as he built impressive and unique woodworking pieces.”
The kibbutz also said that Ronen “had a deep connection to nature and animals, especially dogs, and he worked in the kibbutz chicken coop. He was also a talented and beloved volunteer at Magen David Adom as an emergency medical responder, and in the period before his death, he was close to completing his training as an ambulance driver, a role he aspired to fill in Nir Oz to help as many people in the area as possible and continue saving lives.”
MDA said in a statement following the announcement of his death that Engel had begun volunteering with the organization around two years earlier and had left his house on October 7 with his first responder bag to try and help others.
Yossi Abuharon, the volunteer manager of the Ofakim MDA station, said that Ronen “was always smiling, that was his hallmark. Even when we arrived at the worst of accidents, he managed to make his patients smile and forget their troubles for a moment.”
Oakkharasri dreamed of returning to Thailand to build his own farm
Oakkharasri worked for a total of eight years on various kibbutzim in Israel, beginning in the north, before eventually arriving in Be’eri near the Gaza border, the Hostages and Missing families forum said on Sunday.
He was described as a quiet man focused on his work, who kept in contact daily with his seven-year-old daughter, Kaimuk, and his mother, the forum said.
He was set to return to Thailand in October 2023 and dreamed of building his own farm, the forum said.
With the two hostages returned to Israel late Saturday, the number of bodies of captives still held in the Strip now stands at 16, out of the 28 that were there at the start of the current ceasefire.
The hostage deal reached earlier this month required Hamas to release the remaining 20 living hostages and the deceased hostages accessible to it within 72 hours of Israel’s October 10 withdrawal to the so-called Yellow Line inside Gaza.
In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners and detainees, including 250 terror convicts serving life terms, plus the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every dead hostage returned.
Hamas has said it would require additional machinery to locate the remaining deceased hostages. Israel has accused Hamas of lying, saying it can return almost all of the bodies.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Thursday with close advisers to discuss potential steps that Israel could take to pressure Hamas to release the remaining bodies faster. Jerusalem has threatened to curb the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and has kept the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza closed.
Hamas said Saturday that the closure of the Rafah crossing was causing significant delays in the handover of hostages’ remains, alleging that the continued closure “blocks the entry of specialized equipment needed to search for those missing under the rubble and prevents forensic teams and tools required to identify bodies,” leading to “significant delays in the retrieval and transfer of remains.”
The war in Gaza started on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Fighting stopped last weekend, after Israeli and Hamas negotiators signed the US-brokered deal, presented as the first phase of a 20-point White House peace plan, which would eventually see Hamas disarmed, Gaza demilitarized, and the installation of a transitional, “technocratic” government that could eventually hand power to the Palestinian Authority if the latter completes certain reforms.
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