Israel says it receives remains believed to be of Gaza captive

Israel says the Red Cross has handed over a set of human remains believed to belong to an Israeli captive held in Gaza.

“Israel has received, via the Red Cross, the coffin of a fallen hostage,” which was handed over to Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers inside Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
The coffin was taken to Tel Aviv’s National Centre of Forensic Medicine to determine whether the remains belong to one of the three remaining deceased captives still in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“Upon completion of the identification process, formal notification will be delivered to the family,” Netanyahu’s office said.

The handover of the remains is part of a United States-brokered plan to end Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, where a tenuous ceasefire continues to hold despite continuing Israeli attacks across the territory.

Palestinian armed groups have returned the bodies of 25 captives as part of the deal between Israel and Hamas, which took effect on October 10. In return, Israel has released the bodies of 330 Palestinians to the authorities in Gaza.
The deal stipulated the return of the remains of 28 captives in exchange for the remains of 360 Palestinians killed during Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Hamas says it has not been able to reach all of the remains because they are buried under rubble from Israel’s more than two-year war.

Earlier on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office said the delay amounted to a ceasefire violation.
Since the ceasefire began, Israel has violated the truce at least 497 times, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. Children, women and the elderly account for the majority of those victims.

Gaza’s Health Ministry on Tuesday said Israeli forces killed three people east of Khan Younis in the south. It said the bodies were brought to hospitals along with 14 others recovered from the rubble over the past 24 hours.

The killings brought the death toll to 345 Palestinians since the ceasefire took effect, the ministry said.

Later on Tuesday, Israel’s military said it killed five Hamas fighters emerging from a tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza and another who crossed into an Israeli-held part of northern Gaza and approached troops.

As well as repeatedly breaking the ceasefire deal, Israel continues to heavily restrict deliveries of food, water, fuel and medical supplies into the devastated enclave, as mandated in the deal.