The armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, announced in a statement on Friday that its fighters handed over the remains at 11pm local time (20:00 GMT), without elaborating on where the body was retrieved.
According to the group, the remains were pulled out earlier in the day and were those of an “occupation prisoner”, suggesting they belonged to an Israeli rather than one of the captives of several other nationalities also taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed a short while later that Israel had received the coffin of a captive after it was handed over to the Red Cross by Hamas in Gaza.
The coffin will be transferred to Israel’s Ministry of Health’s National Center for Forensic Medicine, where a formal identification process will be conducted before the family is informed.
The Israeli military requested that “the public act with sensitivity and wait for the official identification”. It also added that “Hamas is required to uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the deceased hostages”.
Hamas has said it’s committed to the terms of the United States-mediated ceasefire deal, including the handover of captive bodies still unaccounted for under Gaza’s ruins. It has repeatedly stressed it has returned all the bodies it was able to recover, but needs help locating remaining captives trapped under the rubble following Israeli strikes.
In a statement earlier on Friday, Hamas announced that some captives’ remains were in tunnels or buildings that were later destroyed by Israel, and that heavy machinery was required to dig through rubble to retrieve them. It blamed Israel for the delay, stressing it had not allowed any new bulldozers into the Gaza Strip.
Most heavy equipment in Gaza was destroyed during the war, leaving only a limited number as Palestinians try to clear massive amounts of rubble across the bombarded territory.
US President Donald Trump has warned Hamas that he would greenlight Israel to resume the war on Gaza if the group does not live up to its end of the deal and return all captives’ bodies, totalling 28. So far in the past days, Hamas handed over the remains of nine captives, along with a 10th body that Israel claims was not that of a captive.
The return of the 10th dead captive on Friday comes as Gaza’s civil defence said more than 10,000 slain Palestinians remain trapped under debris and rubble across the enclave. Only 280 have so far been retrieved.
Hamas has urged mediators to ensure the increased flow of essential aid into Gaza, expedite the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and start reconstruction. Despite the ceasefire deal agreed last week, Israel has yet to allow the entry of aid in scale and is still operating in about half of the Gaza Strip, as attacks continue in some areas.
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