Israel must now agree to a ceasefire and bring the remaining hostages home “before they all die,” families and friends said on Tuesday as the bodies of six more prisoners – including a British-Israeli national – were recovered from Gaza.

Nadav Popplewell, 51, who was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, was rescued by Israeli forces in a night-time operation along with Yagev Buchshtab, 35; Alexander Dancyg, 76; Avraham Munder, 79; Yoram Metzger, 80, and Chaim Perry, 80.

“We need to start bringing people home alive, not dead – and that needs to happen soon,” said Adele Raemer, a British-Israeli teacher who lived three doors down from Mr Popplewell’s family in Kibbutz Nirim and was friends with the family.

“The Israeli military has already caused great damage in Gaza and I expect progress. (The hostages) have been there long enough,” she said.

This came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Egypt to keep ceasefire talks on track, while in Gaza at least 12 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in northern Gaza housing displaced people. Israel said it had attacked a Hamas command center there.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not reacting more quickly to the talks. The recovery of the bodies shows that an agreement is now necessary.

“Stop the briefings, stop the tweets, stop the rhymes in front of the cameras,” he said. “All attempts by Netanyahu to sabotage the negotiations should stop. A deal now, before they all die.”

Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat (39) is among the remaining hostages, said the news that the deaths of all six hostages had been confirmed and the bodies returned was “devastating” for the families of those still held in the bombed strip.

“This shows how urgent it is to get the others out. There are still dozens of hostages being held in the (Hamas) tunnels who may now be taking their last breath,” he said. The Independent. “It is unfair that we have let them rot for over 300 days without a solution in sight.”

Dickmann described it as a “global obligation” to get them out and also criticized Netanyahu for suggesting that there might not even be a hostage agreement on the table.

“If we do not push for an agreement now, we will lose even more hostages. It is not too late to save many of them.

“These six hostages could have been saved if an agreement had been reached in time in November. Dozens of hostages are still alive and in the hands of Hamas. If we do not act quickly, they will suffer the same fate.”

In May, Hamas released a video claiming that Popplewell, one of the 250 hostages captured during the October 7 attack on Israel, was injured in an Israeli airstrike in April. The Israeli military confirmed this a month later.

Popplewell, who is diabetic, was captured along with his 79-year-old mother, Channah Peri, who was released during a ceasefire in November in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. His brother was killed in the attack.

In a statement about the recovery of the bodies, Netanyahu said: “This terrible loss hurts our hearts.”

In Gaza, the Civil Defense Authority – which operates under Hamas – said rescue workers were struggling to recover missing people believed to be trapped under the rubble of the Mustafa Hafez school in western Rimal after the Israeli attack. Among the dead was Hamza Murtaja, a Palestinian journalist whose family said he had been reporting from Gaza for several foreign media outlets.

Moatassim Murtaja said his brother Hamza went to the school to record interviews with some of the 700 displaced civilians who had found shelter there.

“The Israeli military bombed the school while he was working. I called civil defense to find out what had happened and they told me my brother had been killed,” he said. The IndependentHe said his other brother, Yasser Murtaja, also a journalist, was killed in 2018.

“I beg the world to stop the violence and killing of journalists. This is the second brother who is a journalist that I have lost.”

The Israeli military said it had carried out a “precise strike” against militants operating “inside a Hamas command and control center” housed in the school and used to plan attacks against Israeli troops and Israel. It said it had taken “numerous steps to reduce the risk of endangering civilians.”

Israel also continued its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip and further heavy shelling was reported from Khan Younis.

Ahmad, a Palestinian who fled the area due to Israeli evacuation orders, said The Independent: “Even in the so-called humanitarian areas, where there is no evacuation order, drones were firing everywhere. We had bullet holes in our tent.

“We had to flee on foot because so many cars were blocking the road.”

According to Gaza health officials, more than 40,000 Palestinians have died as a result of Israel’s bombing of Gaza following the Hamas attack. Air and ground operations have caused an unprecedented level of destruction and forced the vast majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents to flee their homes, many of them multiple times.

In Egypt, Blinken met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose country has been mediating the talks alongside the US and Qatar for months. After the meeting, Sisi said it was time to end the war and warned against escalating the conflict in the region. The Middle East is still waiting for Iran to retaliate for the assassination of a Hamas leader on Iranian soil.

But an agreement obviously remains difficult. Netanyahu is said to have told a group of families of fallen soldiers and hostages from Gaza who opposed a ceasefire agreement that he was “not sure” whether there would be a breakthrough.

Meanwhile, Hamas said the latest proposal presented to it represented a “reversal” of what was previously agreed and accused Washington of submitting to Israel’s “new conditions”.