Israel suspects that Hamas intends to use the requested heavy machinery, such as bulldozers, in order to further bury the remains of deceased hostages rather than recover them, Israel Public Broadcaster KAN News reported on Tuesday.
Earlier on Tuesday, a video filmed by an IDF drone circulated, showing Hamas members placing Tzarfati's remains in a freshly dug hole before covering the remains with dirt. They then proceeded to "dig" up the remains and called over members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to witness the discovery.
According to KAN, Israeli officials were notified of Hamas's actions in the video as they happened. Still, they ordered the IDF not to engage so they could release footage of the incident later and potentially stoke public outrage against the terror group and its actions.
The ICRC condemned the staged recovery in a statement released Tuesday night, while claiming that it had no prior knowledge of "prior knowledge of the circumstances that led to this."
Egypt sends heavy engineering vehicles to Gaza as Hamas stalls in search
Egypt transferred four heavy engineering vehicles into the Gaza Strip on Sunday through the Kerem Shalom crossing to assist in locating the remains of the 13 hostages who have not yet been recovered, Walla reported.
The Qatari network Al Araby TV reported that ICRC vehicles entered the Rafah area to take part in the effort.
Hamas is also capable of returning a double-digit number of deceased hostages' remains and is not making enough effort to return the remains despite knowing their burial locations, an Israeli source told public broadcaster KAN News two weeks ago.
Even so, the terror group has stated several times that it cannot locate all the murdered hostages in the Gaza Strip, stressing as recently as earlier the same evening that it has already handed over all the hostages it could access.
Amir Bohbot, Guy Elster, and Reuters contributed to this report.