The bod­ies of three more hostages killed on Oct 7. were re­cov­ered overnight from Gaza, Is­rael’s army said Fri­day, as the top Unit­ed Na­tions court pre­pares to rule on whether Is­rael must halt its mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions and with­draw from the en­clave.

The bod­ies of Hanan Yablon­ka, Michel Nisen­baum, and Ori­on Her­nan­dez Radoux were found and their fam­i­lies have been no­ti­fied. The army said they were killed on the day of the at­tack at the Mefal­sim in­ter­sec­tion, and their bod­ies were tak­en to Gaza.

The an­nounce­ment comes less than a week af­ter the army said it found the bod­ies of three oth­er Is­raeli hostages killed on Oct. 7.

Hamas-led mil­i­tants killed around 1,200 peo­ple, main­ly civil­ians, and ab­duct­ed around 250 oth­ers in the Oct. 7 at­tack. Around half of those hostages have since been freed, most in swaps for Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers held by Is­rael dur­ing a week­long cease-fire in No­vem­ber.

Is­rael says around 100 hostages are still cap­tive in Gaza, along with the bod­ies of at least 39 more, while 17 bod­ies of hostages have been re­cov­ered.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu has vowed to both elim­i­nate Hamas and bring all the hostages back, but he’s made lit­tle progress. He faces pres­sure to re­sign, and the U.S. has threat­ened to scale back its sup­port over the hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in Gaza.

On Fri­day Ne­tanyahu said the coun­try had a du­ty to do every­thing to re­turn those ab­duct­ed, both those killed and those who are alive.

In a post on X Fri­day, French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron gave con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of Hernán­dez-Radoux, a French-Mex­i­can cit­i­zen, say­ing France re­mains com­mit­ted to re­leas­ing the hostages.

The coun­try is al­so ex­pect­ing a rul­ing Fri­day af­ter­noon by the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice to de­cide on an ur­gent plea by South Africa to or­der Is­rael to cease op­er­a­tions. Is­rael is un­like­ly to com­ply with any such or­der. Even so, a cease-fire or­der by judges of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice would heap more pres­sure on an in­creas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed Is­rael.

On the hostages, Is­raelis are di­vid­ed in­to two main camps: those who want the gov­ern­ment to put the war on hold and free the hostages, and oth­ers who think the hostages are an un­for­tu­nate price to pay for erad­i­cat­ing Hamas. On-and-off ne­go­ti­a­tions me­di­at­ed by Qatar, the Unit­ed States and Egypt have yield­ed lit­tle.

Anger is grow­ing at home at the gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the hostage cri­sis.

Ear­li­er this week a group rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies of hostages re­leased new video footage show­ing Hamas’ cap­ture of five fe­male Is­raeli sol­diers near the Gaza bor­der on Oct. 7.

The video shows sev­er­al of the young sol­diers bloody and wound­ed. In one scene, a mil­i­tant tells one of the ter­ri­fied women she is beau­ti­ful.

The video sparked more protests across the coun­try call­ing for the hostages’ re­lease.

The army said on Fri­day the hostages were found dur­ing an op­er­a­tion in Ja­baliya. Mil­i­tary spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Ha­gari said in a news con­fer­ence that the army was able to re­trieve the bod­ies based on “crit­i­cal in­tel­li­gence” un­cov­ered last week by Is­raeli forces op­er­at­ing in Gaza.

The group rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies of the hostages said the bod­ies had been re­turned to their fam­i­lies for bur­ial.

Nisen­baum, 59, was a Brazil­ian-Is­raeli from the south­ern city of Sderot. He was tak­en hostage when he went to res­cue his 4-year-old grand­daugh­ter.

Ory­on Her­nan­dez Radoux, 30, was tak­en from the No­va mu­sic fes­ti­val, which he at­tend­ed with his part­ner Shani Louk. Louk’s body was one of those found by the army near­ly a week ago.

Yablon­ka, 42, a fa­ther of two, was al­so tak­en from the mu­sic fes­ti­val. His fam­i­ly in De­cem­ber told the AP that he loved mu­sic. Yablon­ka’s fam­i­ly had no news of him for near­ly two months af­ter he’d been tak­en, not know­ing if he was alive or dead.

Is­rael’s of­fen­sive since the war be­gan has killed more than 35,000 Pales­tini­ans, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, and has caused a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis and a near-famine.

While it has weak­ened Hamas’ ca­pa­bil­i­ties, af­ter near­ly eight months of war, mil­i­tants are re­group­ing in some of the hard­est-hit ar­eas in north­ern Gaza and re­sum­ing rock­et at­tacks in­to near­by Is­raeli com­mu­ni­ties. Is­rael says its troops are op­er­at­ing in Rafah in the south, in cen­tral Gaza and in Ja­baliya in the north. —TEL AVIV, Is­rael (AP)

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Sto­ry by SAM MED­NICK | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Melanie Lid­man in Tel Aviv and John Leices­ter in Le Pecq, France, con­tributed.