The Palestinian armed group has said it has repatriated all the deceased hostages that it could reach
Hamas has delivered the remains of two more dead hostages to Israel overnight, increasing the overall number of returned bodies to nine, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.
The armed group freed the last 20 remaining living Israeli captives on Monday in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, as part of a deal brokered by the US, Qatar, Egypt, and Türkiye. On Tuesday, Hamas delivered seven corpses of dead captives to Israel, although the Jewish state said one of them belonged to a Palestinian.
The remains that Hamas passed on to Israel via the Red Cross on Wednesday night were brought to a forensic institute in Tel Aviv and identified as Inbar Haiman and Muhammad el-Atrash, the IDF said.
Haiman was among those killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, with the body of the 27-year-old student from Haifa being abducted to Gaza. She was the last female hostage – dead or alive – being held inside the enclave.
El-Atrash, 39, who served in the Northern Brigade of the IDF’s Gaza Division, was killed on the same day and his body was also taken by the fighters.
Hamas claimed that it had fulfilled its part of the deal by releasing all living hostages and delivering the bodies of all deceased captives “that it was able to reach.”
“It requires great effort and special equipment to search for” the remains of the other 19 dead hostages, the group said. “We are making great efforts to resolve this issue.”
The office of Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz insisted that Hamas should release all 28 bodies, otherwise “Israel, in coordination with the US, will resume fighting and act to achieve a total defeat of Hamas, to change the reality in Gaza and achieve all the objectives of the war.”
Some 1,200 people were killed and 250 others taken hostage during the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023. The IDF’s retaliatory attacks in Gaza have claimed more than 67,000 lives and left almost 170,000 wounded, according to the local health authorities.
