Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Sunday to intensify the fight with Hamas after the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six hostages, all of whom were apparently shot to death by the militants just as troops were zeroing in on their location in Gaza.

“Those who kill hostages do not want an agreement” for a Gaza cease-fire, Netanyahu said in a statement, telling Hamas leaders that “we will hunt you down, we will catch you and we will settle the score.”

A military spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, told reporters in a briefing, “According to our initial estimation, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them.” They were found in a tunnel in the southern city of Rafah.

Netanyahu also accused Hamas of carrying out a shooting attack earlier on Sunday that killed three police officers near the city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Hamas has not claimed responsibility for the attack but called it a “heroic operation by the resistance.”

Netanyahu said, “We are fighting on all fronts against a cruel enemy who wants to murder us all. The fact that Hamas continues to commit atrocities such as those it committed on October 7 obliges us to do everything we can to ensure that it can no longer do so.”

The Israeli military said the West Bank attackers fired at a vehicle at the checkpoint near Hebron. “Security forces have begun to search for the terrorists,” it said in a statement.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that Israeli forces are continuing to search tunnels near where the bodies of the hostages were found, only a kilometer from where a living hostage, Qaid Farhan Alkadi, a member of the Bedouin community in southern Israel, was rescued last week.

Oma Neutra, the mother of another hostage, Omer Neutra-Oma, said on CNN, “It’s time for the leaders to get this done,” to reach a cease-fire to halt nearly 11 months of fighting in Gaza precipitated by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and led to the capture of about 250 hostages.

“Enough is enough,” she said.

The Israeli counteroffensive has killed nearly 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials, while the Israeli military says the death toll includes several thousand Hamas combatants.

Israel says it believes 101 Israeli and foreign hostages remain in Gaza, but about one-third of them is believed to be dead, while the fate of the others is not known.

Senior Hamas officials said that Israel, in its refusal to sign a cease-fire agreement, was to blame for the newest deaths.

“Netanyahu is responsible for the killing of Israeli prisoners,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. “The Israelis should choose between Netanyahu and the deal.”

Hamas has offered to release the hostages in return for an end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants, jailed by Israel.

The Hostage Families Forum called on Netanyahu to take responsibility and explain what was holding up an agreement.

“They were all murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, torture, and starvation in Hamas captivity. The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages,” it said.

Families of the hostages called for a nationwide Israeli general strike to try to increase pressure on Netanyahu to reach a cease-fire.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid also called for a “general strike.”

“They were alive, but Netanyahu and his cabinet of death decided not to save them,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “There are still hostages alive. We can still make a deal.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called on the government to reverse a decision last Thursday to keep Israeli forces in the Philadelphi Corridor along the border with Egypt, a key point of contention in negotiations for a Gaza cease-fire.

“The cabinet must gather immediately and reverse the decision made on Thursday,” Gallant said in a statement. “We must bring back the hostages that are still being held by Hamas.” Gallant and Netanyahu got into a shouting match over the corridor issue, but other security officials sided with Netanyahu.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who has closely followed the fate of the hostages, said the six bodies found in the Gaza tunnel included Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Biden said he was “devastated and outraged.”

“Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages,” he said in a statement.

Goldberg-Polin, 23, was captured at a music festival near the Gaza border and appeared in a video released by Hamas in late April.

Earlier, speaking to reporters at his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware vacation retreat, Biden said he was “still optimistic” about reaching a cease-fire deal to stop the conflict, adding, “People are continuing to meet.”

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.