Hamas terrorist’s interrogation, covert abduction and artillery cover led to recovery of Oron Shaul’s remains

Shaul, a Golani Brigade soldier, died during fighting overnight on July 19–20, 2014, when the armored personnel carrier he was riding in became immobilized near Gaza City.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Israeli forces recovered the remains of Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul from Gaza in January 2025 through a covert intelligence operation that combined deception, a targeted abduction, and artillery fire used to conceal the final retrieval, more than a decade after he was killed in combat, Ynet reports.

Shaul, a Golani Brigade soldier, died during fighting overnight on July 19–20, 2014, when the armored personnel carrier he was riding in became immobilized near Gaza City’s Daraj Tuffah area and was struck by Hamas fire. Hamas later referred to him as “the Daraj soldier.”

The first breakthrough came during Rosh Hashanah in 2024, when Israeli troops seized a computer during a raid. Messages on the device showed a Hamas operative warning senior commander Izz al-Din Haddad that a detainee taken from Shifa Hospital knew where Shaul’s body was being kept. Intelligence services narrowed in on one suspect from the hospital arrests. After initially denying involvement, he described two men from Khan Younis who had spoken about the body being transferred to a Gazan named Ibrahim Hilo.

Records showed Hilo had commanded a Hamas platoon in 2014 before later working as a merchant in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. The detainee said the body was hidden in a freezer beneath Hilo’s home. Israeli forces had previously entered the building but had not inspected the freezer.

Fearing a visible raid could endanger living hostages, security officials chose a covert approach. Hilo was lured into what he believed was a business arrangement and persuaded to rent a warehouse near the Salah al-Din route, where an elite unit abducted him after several failed attempts to bring him to the site. As the ceasefire set for Jan. 19 approached, Hilo finally admitted the body was inside a locked ice cream freezer beneath his house.

With time running out and forces already withdrawing, a Palestinian collaborator was sent alone during the night of Jan. 18–19. To mask the noise of breaking the lock, the IDF fired artillery into open areas nearby. The collaborator removed the body, wrapped it in a rug, and carried it nearly a mile to waiting Golani Brigade forces in armored vehicles. Shaul was returned to Israel and laid to rest.