Israel receives body Hamas says belongs to hostage

Israel has confirmed it has received a coffin Hamas says contains the body of another hostage.

Red Cross vehicles collected the body hours after Hamas issued a joint statement with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad saying it had located it in the Khan Younis area of southern Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister’s office said the body will be transferred to Israel, where it will be received at a military ceremony before undergoing an identification process.

Confirmation that it belongs to a hostage would mean 25 out of 28 deceased hostages have been handed over to Israel under the first phase of the current ceasefire deal which forms part of a US plan to end the Gaza war.

Under the ceasefire deal, Hamas agreed to return the 20 living and 28 dead hostages it was still holding.

All the living Israeli hostages were released on 13 October in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.

For each dead Israeli hostage returned, Israel has agreed to hand over the remains of 15 Palestinians. But with no DNA testing available in Gaza, it is hard to identify them.

Hamas seized 251 hostages when it launched the deadly attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 during which it killed 1,200 people.

More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory response, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, whose figures the UN considers reliable, but Israel disputes.

Before the latest handover, of the four bodies still in Gaza, three were Israeli and one was Thai.

Israel has accused Hamas of deliberately delaying the recovery of the hostages’ bodies, but Hamas has said it is struggling to find them under rubble.

The slow progress has meant there has been no advance on the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan.

This includes plans for the governance of Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the disarmament of Hamas, and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.