‘Beyond all imagination’: IDF shutters its Hostages HQ over two years after Oct. 7 |
Over two years after the October 7, 2023, attack, with the return of all the captives, living and dead, from the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces said on Thursday that its Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters was going dormant.
The unit had been established under the Military Intelligence Directorate in the wake of the Hamas-led onslaught and was tasked with intelligence-gathering efforts on the hostages and missing persons. Until November 2025, it was headed by Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, who also served as the IDF’s point man on hostage negotiations.
“The scenario in which everyone returned [from Gaza] is beyond all imagination; we did not assess that we would reach this situation,” a senior officer in the unit said in a call with reporters on Thursday.
In all, the headquarters dealt with 255 hostages held in the Strip — the 251 abducted in the October 7 attack and four who had been taken captive in 2014 and 2015.
During the initial days of the war, the unit was looking into 3,100 missing people, a number that dropped over time. It took until the end of 2024 to confirm that a total of 251 had been abducted, according to the officer.
According to the IDF’s data, 38 of the hostages were abducted alive and killed in captivity........