Data from
carrion-eating birds is helping Israel’s Army locate corpses around sites of
the October 7 attack by Hamas operatives, said a wildlife expert involved in
the project.
Eagles, vultures
and other birds of prey fitted with tracking devices have played a role in the
search for human remains, said Ohad Hatzofe of Israel’s Nature and Parks
Authority.
“When the war
began, I was approached by some reservists serving in that unit,” said Hatzofe.
“They asked me if my birds could help with something.”
The idea came from
EITAN, a unit within the army’s human resources branch which is responsible for
locating missing soldiers.
Hatzofe heads a
programme that tracks endangered griffon vultures, which chiefly feed on dead
animals, as well as eagles and other birds of prey which he said also eat
carrion.
The programme has
tagged hundreds of birds with GPS trackers to study their migratory patterns,
feeding habits and environmental threats they face.
On October 23, one
of them – a rare sea eagle which had returned to Israeli skies the day before
after spending the summer in northern Russia – was found near Beeri, just
outside the Gaza Strip.
“I sent my data”
to the Army, said Hatzofe, adding, “They went to verify it and recovered four
bodies,” unable to reveal more about the location or identities of the corpses.
Beeri, a kibbutz
agricultural community, saw 85 residents killed when Hamas operatives rushed
across the highly-militarised border to carry out the worst attack since Israel’s
creation in 1948.
According to
Israeli authorities more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed in
the attack.
Vowing to destroy
Hamas, Israel retaliated with a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that
the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says has killed more than 10,500 people,
also mostly civilians.
In Beeri, another
30 are missing or presumed to be among the roughly 240 hostages seized by Hamas
during its attack.
Hatzofe said data
from a second bird, a Bonelli’s eagle, enabled the recovery of “other bodies
inside Israel”.
Israeli police on
Monday said they had identified the bodies of 843 civilians and 351 soldiers in
total.
More than one
month after the Hamas attack, dozens of others listed as missing have not been
found or identified.
AFP
