Israel said on Sunday it had received the remains of three additional captives from Hamas as part of the ongoing hostage-prisoner exchange under a US-brokered ceasefire agreement for Gaza.
Despite occasional flare-ups, a fragile truce has held in Gaza since October 10 under a deal focused on the return of all Israeli hostages, both living and dead.
“Israel has received, through the Red Cross, the coffins of three fallen hostages that were handed over to IDF and Shin Bet forces inside the Gaza Strip,” the prime minister’s office said.
An Israeli health ministry spokesperson said later that their bodies had arrived at a national forensic centre “for identification and investigation into the circumstances and cause of death”.
Experts from the centre would then meet with the families of the deceased “to discuss and elaborate on the findings”, the spokesperson said.
Hamas’s armed wing said it had found the remains earlier on Sunday “along the route of one of the tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip”.
Hamas had been holding 48 hostages in Gaza, including 20 confirmed alive, when the ceasefire was announced.
Since the start of the truce, Hamas has released the surviving hostages and begun handing over the remains of 28 deceased captives.
Of the latter, it has so far returned 17 — including 15 Israelis, one Thai national, and one Nepali.
Israel has accused Hamas of dragging its feet in returning the bodies, while the Palestinian group says the process is slow because many remains are buried beneath Gaza’s rubble.
It has repeatedly called on mediators and the Red Cross to provide it with the necessary equipment and personnel to recover the bodies.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement that the handover on Sunday showed that the group “was making every effort to return the bodies as quickly as possible”.
An Israeli campaign group representing the families of hostages urged the government to act decisively to ensure all the deceased are brought home.
“The Hostage Families demand that the prime minister act with determination and firmness in order to bring about the immediate realisation of Hamas’s commitments under the agreement and to return all of the deceased hostages to Israel’s hands,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.
– ‘Life is impossible’ –
In addition to returning the bodies of the 17 hostages, Hamas has also handed over partial remains of a hostage whose body was recovered by the Israeli army last year.
That incident sparked outrage in Israel, which accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire agreement by returning only partial remains instead of a complete body of another hostage.
“We call for the return of all 11 deceased hostages who have still not been returned to Israeli soil,” Inbal Bachar, aunt of Sahar Baruch, whose remains were handed over earlier this week, said during Baruch’s funeral on Sunday.
“We cannot continue our lives until they all return,” she said, according to a statement issued by the forum.
In Gaza, Palestinians have been hoping that an Israeli military withdrawal will follow the truce and bring an end to their ordeal.
“We want the second phase of the agreement to begin so that we can return to our homes,” said Naif al-Sulaibi, a resident of Jabalia in northern Gaza.
“As long as the Yellow Line and the army remain here, life is impossible and conditions will stay unbearable,” he added, referring to the de facto boundary marking Israeli military positions inside Gaza.
The implementation of the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan has yet to be agreed, particularly as it concerns disarming Hamas, establishing a transitional authority and deploying an international stabilisation force in Gaza.
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