Israel has received the body of a soldier held in Gaza for more than a decade after he was killed in an ambush by Hamas fighters in 2014 during the last major ground assault on the Palestinian enclave.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Sunday the remains were handed over to Israeli forces in Gaza by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after Hamas transferred the body to the aid organisation.
Formal identification of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, 23, was confirmed by Israeli forensics teams.
At the start of a weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said holding the body for so long has caused “great agony for his family, which will now be able to give him a Jewish burial”.
“Lieutenant Hadar Goldin fell in heroic combat during Operation Protective Edge,” Israel’s leader said.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said the body was retrieved on Saturday from a tunnel in the Yebna refugee camp in Rafah in southern Gaza.
Goldin was killed on August 1, 2014, two hours after a ceasefire took effect and ended that year’s war between Israel and Hamas. He was part of an Israeli unit tasked with locating and destroying Hamas tunnels.
Another Israeli soldier, Oron Shaul, was also killed in the six-week war, and his body was returned earlier this year.
There are now four deceased abductees remaining in Gaza to be returned under the terms of a ceasefire that began last month. Hamas has so far released 20 living captives and 24 bodies.
For each body returned, Israel has been releasing the remains of 15 Palestinians. Ahmed Dheir, director of forensic medicine at the Nasser Medical Complex in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, said 300 bodies have now been returned and 89 identified.
Israeli attacks continue
Israel has also released nearly 2,000 living Palestinian prisoners since the October 10 truce began. Palestinian authorities said more than 10,000 people still remain in Israeli detention.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said 241 Palestinians have been killed and 619 wounded since the ceasefire began and 528 bodies have been recovered from under rubble and at attack sites.
Despite the truce, Israel’s military continues to carry out attacks across the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, one man was killed in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, and two died in separate assaults in the north and south, the Health Ministry said.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the Far’a refugee camp near Tubas while Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in several areas, according to local reports.
According to Israeli authorities, Palestinian armed groups captured 251 people during Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed at least 1,139 people.
Israel began its war in Gaza on the same day. It has killed at least 68,875 Palestinians and wounded 170,679, according to the Health Ministry.
INTERACTIVE – Gaza Israel kills more than 200 Palestinians since ceasefire map-1761734414
