Guy Iluz and Bipin Joshi Named Among Four Hostages Returned Dead

The Israel Defense Forces spokesperson announced on 14 October 2025 that four bodies handed back by Hamas had been identified as those of hostages, among them Guy Iluz and Bipin Joshi, according to the statement issued through the Press Service of Israel. The announcement followed the completion of the identification process at Israel’s forensic institute. The names of the other two were not cleared for publication at the time.

Of Iluz, who was 26 when he died, the military said: “According to information and intelligence at our disposal, he was wounded and taken captive alive after escaping from the Nova music festival to the Tel Gama area. Guy died from his wounds after not receiving proper medical treatment in captivity.” Of Joshi, it said: “According to information and intelligence at our disposal, Bipin Joshi, a Nepalese citizen, was kidnapped at the age of 23 from a shelter in Kibbutz Alumim. The assessment is that he was murdered in captivity during the first months of the war.” The statement added that “the final conclusions will be formulated after completing the examination of the circumstances of death”.

Why the army waits for the forensic institute before it says a name

Bodies returned from Gaza go to the National Center of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv before any name is released. The Jerusalem Post described the sequence on 12 October 2025: a full-body CT scan looking for implants and old fractures that can be matched to medical records, a forensic examination logging scars, tattoos and injuries, a dental comparison, and DNA testing against samples supplied by relatives. Straightforward cases can be resolved in roughly ninety minutes; complex ones run to several days, which is why identifications from a single handover are often announced in batches.

The Times of Israel reported the same military statement on 14 October 2025, noting that Joshi’s death had not been formally confirmed by Israel before the identification.

The two places these men were taken from

The Nova festival was an open-air dance event held near Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel, a few kilometres from the Gaza boundary. An Israeli military investigation presented to families in April 2025 and reported by the Times of Israel counted 344 festival-goers and 34 security personnel murdered or killed, 171 of them in the area of the party and an adjacent section of Route 232, and 44 people abducted to Gaza. The probe found that the army had approved the event but had not told the troops deployed on the border that it was happening.

Kibbutz Alumim is one of the farming communities in the same stretch of country near the Gaza border. It was among the places attacked on 7 October 2023, a day on which, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s timeline of the war, at least 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken into Gaza. Those abducted included foreign nationals working in Israeli agriculture and in Israeli communities near the border.

What was happening around the handover

The identifications came in the first week of the United States-brokered ceasefire. FDD’s Long War Journal reported on 6 November 2025 that the truce had taken effect on 13 October, that Hamas had released the 20 remaining living hostages, and that the remains of 22 deceased hostages had been transferred by early November, with returns continuing in small batches and disputes over the pace.

What the statement did not say

It did not name the other two hostages identified in the same batch, and it did not say when either man died or where in Gaza either body had been held. The military described its account of both deaths as based on “information and intelligence”, and said the conclusions on the circumstances of death were not yet final. The statement did not say whether Nepal had been notified of Joshi’s identification.