Israel’s military says another coffin containing the remains of a dead hostage which was handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza is now back in Israel.
Posting on X, the Israeli military urged the public to “act with sensitivity and wait for the official identification, which will first be provided to the families”.
This was echoed by a statement from the prime minister’s office, which asked people to “refrain from spreading rumours and information that is not official”.
This week, Hamas has returned nine of the 28 deceased hostages that were still in Gaza – this will be the tenth if forensic testing confirms the identity of the remains matches those of a hostage.
In a statement on Friday night, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its team had taken “all possible measures to ensure the deceased are managed with respect”, and that Israeli forensic authorities would now have the task of identifying the remains.
There has been fury in Israel that Hamas has not returned all of the bodies, in line with last week’s ceasefire deal – though the US has downplayed the suggestion it amounts to a breach.
On Friday night, the IDF again stressed that Hamas must “uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the hostages”.
Hamas has said it remained committed to the ceasefire, including “keenness to hand over all remaining corpses”.
The Palestinian group accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of impeding its ability to search for hostages’ remains by not allowing heavy machinery and diggers into Gaza. It has blamed Israel for making the task of finding bodies difficult, because Israeli strikes have reduced so many buildings to rubble.
Speaking on Thursday at a memorial for victims of the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack, Netanyahu said he was “determined” to secure the return of all the dead hostages, and that the country would continue to fight terrorism with “full force”.
As part of the US-brokered ceasefire deal, Israel freed 250 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.
After Hamas said it was unable to retrieve all the bodies, two senior Trump advisers said preparations to move to the next phase of the ceasefire deal were continuing.
The advisers told reporters that the US government did not so far believe that Hamas had broken the agreement by not retrieving more remains, and said the group had acted in good faith by sharing information with interlocutors.
While the full text of the agreement between Israel and Hamas has not been made public, a leaked version which appeared in Israeli media appeared to allow for the possibility that not all of the bodies would be immediately accessible.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 others hostage.
At least 67,967 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen by the UN as reliable.
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